Trump To Skip First Republican Debate

In the 2016 campaign for the White House, former President Donald Trump turned the Republican primary debates into live TV events that attracted record audiences to Fox and CNN.

But like a star walking away from a hit TV show, The L-A Times reports Trump is skipping the first debate of the 2024 Republican primary season airing Aug. 23 from Milwaukee on Fox News, according to multiple reports.

The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, said Trump could counterprogram the debate by giving an interview with ousted former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. Trump’s campaign has not confirmed that plan.

Trump, who has a wide lead in the polls over his competition for the nomination, has suggested he will not participate in Fox’s telecast.

Trump, Carlson

Fox News has not commented on Trump’s status or whether it might take legal action against Carlson, who is still being paid by the network after being taken off the air on April 24. The network in June sent a cease-and-desist letter to Carlson, saying his online programs on X are a breach of the contract that pays him more than $15 million a year and runs through 2024.

Trump has expressed irritation with coverage of him on Fox News.

Fox News Washington anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, who will be the moderators in Milwaukee, have known for weeks that Trump might not appear and are prepared to go on without him.

“We are always ready,” Doug Rohrbeck, senior vice president for Washington news and politics for Fox News, said this week in an interview. “We are preparing two different rundowns where we will have two sets of questions. And there’s one with Trump, and then there’s one without Trump.”

Trump will be a major topic of discussion either way among the candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

“He’s an important element to this discussion because he’s the front runner by a mile right now,” MacCallum said in a recent interview. “He’s an elephant in the room whether he’s in the room or not.”

One reason Trump would want to avoid the debate is that his denials of the 2020 election results, which have continued even after the indictments, would get pushback from MacCallum and Baier.