Soon – November 30 – Fox’s Sean Hannity will be hosting a debate between the GOP’s Florida Governor DeSantis and California’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom.
Interestingly, it seems DeSantis is taking a page from Hannity as Newsmax headlines this: https://www.newsmax.com/
DeSantis Challenges Trump to Newsmax Debate
The story reports:
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, during his town hall on Newsmax, challenged former President Donald Trump, the front-runner in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, to a one-hour debate and stressed that it’s important for debates to continue, even if the Republican National Committee is no longer in charge of them.
‘I’d love to do a debate on Newsmax,’ DeSantis said during Monday night’s town hall. ‘We get the former president, maybe. Let’s just have at it for an hour.’
Earlier Monday, Trump urged the RNC, through his Truth Social page, to cancel the remaining primary debates and focus instead on ‘stop the steal’ efforts and the general election.
DeSantis said he doesn’t know if it’s ‘necessarily the right way’ to allow the RNC to continue controlling the debates.
‘That’s how it’s gone,’ he said. ‘Maybe as we go forward, maybe there will be more freewheeling debates.’
Trump has declined to participate in the first three Republican primary debates, opting to hold rally events instead, and is not expected to attend the fourth debate, planned for Dec. 6 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
‘I find it funny [that] people say cancel debates and stuff,’ DeSantis said. ‘Last time I checked, the people decide who they want to nominate and who they want to elect and Iowans are [getting the] chance to do that.’”
Recall that televised debates with presidential candidates are a relatively new phenomenon. The first debates were in 1960 between Democrat nominee Senator John F. Kennedy and the GOP’s nominee Vice President Richard Nixon. Legendarily, those who watched the debate thought the young, handsome Kennedy won. Those who only heard it on radio thought Nixon had won.
Now there isn’t a presidential election that goes by without the call for debates.
