Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2-ranking Senate GOP leader, says former President Trump should agree to a second debate with Vice President Harris.
Thune, a leading candidate to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) as the next Senate Republican leader, said Trump needs to do a better job of highlighting the substantive differences between the two presidential candidates, something Thune believes was glossed over in the first debate.
Asked whether Trump should agree to a second debate, Thune told The Associated Press in an interview: “Yes, I do. I think it would be helpful.
“I don’t think they got enough into the substance of their differences, and I think elections are always about differences. The contrast this time around couldn’t be more clear in terms of their records, their positions, their vision for the future,” Thune said.
“Litigating that in a debate setting would be really important, and I don’t think they got enough of that done [Tuesday] night,” he said.
Trump has said we will not agree to a second debate, claiming there’s no need to face off against Harris again on stage because he won their first debate, citing unnamed polls in battleground states.
“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH,'” Trump wrote.
Many Republican senators, however, came away from the debate disappointed.
GOP lawmakers said the ABC News moderators pushed back on Trump’s answers but failed to fact-check Harris or ask tough follow-up questions when she dodged their initial queries.
Thune said he doesn’t think debates have big impacts on races but he said Trump needs to do more to highlight the policy differences with his opponent.
“There was a lot of discussion about the moderators and them fact-checking Trump and not fact-checking Harris,” he said.
“I do think that she in some ways has gotten by without having to defend her record, and she’s going to have to do that at some point, and I think President Trump is in the best position to do it — to force her in having to defend her record on the border and on inflation,” he said.
“I think that case has to be prosecuted. Frankly, it could have been done better [Tuesday] night,” he added.