Kellyanne Conway pushes Trump to debate again so Vance doesn’t have ‘last word’

Longtime Republican strategist behind Trump’s successful 2016 campaign claims the former president ‘didn’t say totally no’ to another debate

Kellyanne Conway has urged Donald Trump to debate Kamala Harris a second time to ensure that JD Vance doesn’t have the “last word.”

The former president swiftly dismissed rumors of a second debate following their first showdown last month – a showdown that many Republicans believed Harris won.

But while Trump appears to have shut the door on a second outing, former Trump advisor Conway hasn’t given up hope, claiming the former president’s response wasn’t “totally no”.

The longtime GOP strategist, who was Trump’s senior counsellor during his successful 2016 presidential campaign, publicly called for the Republican presidential candidate to accept a second debate while live on Fox News on Monday.

“I asked President Trump today, we interviewed for an hour, and I said to him: ‘The guy I know, you, is not going to be able to sit down after a 90-minute VP debate and let that be the last word in presidential debates,” she told host Jesse Watters.

“You’re going to say, when is our next one?’ And I hope he does that.”

Trump with his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on November 9 2016 in New York City (Getty Images)

The comments come as Ohio Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz are set to go head-to-head on Tuesday night for their first – and likely only – vice presidential debate.

It may prove pivotal in the success of the overall presidential ticket with two in three Democrats believing that vice presidential nominees carry significant impact on the outcome of the race, according to a Prolific poll commissioned for The Independent.

According to Conway, Trump will struggle to let his running mate Vance have the final word.

“You think there’s going to be another debate with Harris?” Watters asked plainly.

“He had said no, but he didn’t say totally no,” Conway replied. “That October 23rd one was seen as too late. But why not get back in there?”

Conway urged former president to return to the debate stage (Fox News)

She continued: “Trump’s like, I told him, you’re like [baseball player] Shohei Ohtani, your pitching, your batting. You’ve done seven of them. She’s one for one – big deal.”

While Trump has repeatedly stated that he won the debate against Harris on September 10, boasting of his “best” debate performance ever, his one-time advisor admitted that the vice president was currently “one for one.”

According to a CNN flash poll conducted by SSRS, 63 percent of registered voters who tuned in to the ABC News debate believed Harris was the winner. In the fiery debate, Trump accused Harris of wanting “to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” and pushed a false claim that Haitian migrants are eating pet dogs and cats in Ohio.

This article was amended on 4 October 2024. A previous version said that during the debate Trump had lied that Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison”, but this was not a lie. In a 2019 survey, Harris confirmed that she supported taxpayer-funded medical care for transgender and non-binary people, including those in immigration detention.