Senate Republican Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) believes former President Donald Trump should agree to a second debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Following the recent debate, the second presidential debate and first against Harris, her campaign pushed for another debate with Trump. However, Trump declined, saying that he had already won the initial one and saw no need for a rematch.
Thune, the No. 2-ranking Senate GOP leader, emphasized the need for Trump to better highlight the substantive differences between the two candidates, which he felt were overlooked during their first debate.
Asked whether Trump should participate in a second debate, Thune told the Associated Press, “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,” he said. “The contrast this time around couldn’t be more clear in terms of their records, their positions, their vision for the future.
“Litigating that in a debate setting would be really important, and I don’t think they got enough of that done [Tuesday] night.”
Trump compared Harris’s push for a rematch to a defeated boxer seeking another fight.
“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH,’” he wrote on Truth Social.
Many Republican senators were disappointed with ABC’s handling of the event, saying the moderators pushed back on Trump’s responses a number of times, but did not challenge Harris or ask her tough follow-up questions.
Thune acknowledged that debates might not drastically influence election outcomes but insisted that Trump needs to push harder on key policy differences, especially regarding issues like immigration and the economy.
“There was a lot of discussion about the moderators and them fact-checking Trump and not fact-checking Harris,” Thune 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. I think President Trump is in the best position to do it, to force her into defending her record on the border and on inflation and a lot of other issues on which she has flip-flopped.”