Kamala Harris campaigned on Thursday to capitalize on her compelling debate performance, while the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign team vowed to step up efforts to win over voters in swing states seen as crucial to winning the White House.

Meanwhile, her opponent Donald Trump – whose performance in the debate was even criticized by some of his supporters – said he would refuse to debate Harris again. “There will be no third debate,” he said in an angry post on his social media platform Truth Social.

The US Vice President basking in her victory at the debate travelled to the crucial swing state of North Carolina to attend rallies in Charlotte and Greensboro before travelling further north to Pennsylvania, another key part of the campaign, where she will hold two more events on Friday.

Harris is neck-and-neck with Donald Trump in seven swing states that will play a key role in the November election campaign. When Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee, Trump had a solid lead in many of those states, but Harris has now closed the gap and strengthened her party’s chances.

For his part, Trump – who insisted he won Tuesday’s debate with Harris in Philadelphia despite widespread doubts among his supporters – traveled to Arizona, another state where the candidates are neck and neck and which Biden narrowly won in the 2020 presidential election.

While Harris has a narrow but consistent lead nationwide in most current polls, the outcome of the election in November will almost certainly depend on which candidate prevails in the seven swing states – with Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Nevada also considered crucial.

“Vice President Kamala Harris is looking to capitalize on her decisive victory in Tuesday night’s debate against Donald Trump and is now hitting the campaign trail to build on her momentum and make voters even more aware of the choice she made through her debate performance,” said a memo from the Harris campaign released Thursday.

The memo said campaign staff closely studied the 105-minute debate on Wednesday, looking for key moments that could be used for television and online ads targeting swing states.

It also promised that Harris – who has been criticized for avoiding the media since becoming the Democratic nominee – would give a series of interviews with local media in swing states. That includes a meeting planned for next week in Georgia with the National Association of Black Journalists, which hosted Trump in August. The meeting turned into a PR disaster for the Republican candidate.

Harris won praise for her performance at Tuesday night’s debate, which she was credited with successfully baiting and trapping Trump, while Trump repeatedly deviated from his message with broadsides about crowd sizes at his campaign rallies and an unfounded tirade about immigrants.

Some Trump supporters attributed his underperformance to the influence of well-known conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who traveled with him to the debate and spread a false rumor that Haitian immigrants eat domestic cats and dogs, a rumor the former president then repeated during the debate.

Authorities in Springfield, Ohio, where the custom is said to have taken place, denied the story, saying it had apparently been spread in right-wing extremist internet forums and there was no evidence to support it.

However, in a sign of the ongoing impact, police were reported to have evacuated Springfield City Hall on Thursday following a bomb threat.

Harris had called for another debate with Trump, and her campaign trolled him by airing the entire first event on X as an “ad” – expressing its belief that she had clearly won the contest. A CNN snap poll conducted immediately afterward confirmed this belief: 63% of viewers saw her as the winner.

But Trump’s social media post – in which he ranted, often in all caps, about a variety of topics and claimed to have won the debate – seemed to dash any hope of a rematch. “KAMALA SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING FOR THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEARS. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” he said, referring to the first debate as his face-off with Biden and his contest with Harris as the second debate.

An estimated 67.1 million people watched the debate – almost 16 million more than Trump’s duel against Biden in June.

Harris, for her part, reiterated her desire for another debate, despite Trump’s apparent strong opposition. At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, she said, “I believe we owe the voters another debate, because this election and what’s at stake couldn’t be more important.”

Trump also suffered new pain on Thursday when Alberto Gonzales, a former attorney general under George W. Bush, became the latest Republican to endorse his opponent, citing the Republican candidate’s incitement of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, while he was president.

“As the United States approaches a crucial election, I cannot stand by and watch as Donald Trump – possibly the greatest threat to the rule of law in a generation – eyes a return to the White House,” Gonzales said in a statement. “That is why, even though I am a Republican, I have decided to support Kamala Harris for president.”

He added: “Trump failed to do his duty and exercise his power as president to protect members of Congress, law enforcement and the Capitol from the attacks (on January 6).”