Donald Trump says he will “probably” skip Thursday’s GOP debate due to a deepening fight with the Fox News Channel.
At a Tuesday evening press conference, Trump said he would “most likely” hold a competing event in Iowa during Thursday night’s debate, but left some wiggle room in his answer.
Minutes later, Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told the Washington Post said Trump would “definitely not” participate.
The fracas escalated quickly Tuesday, but was the culminations of months of tension between the GOP frontrunner and the Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
Earlier in the day Trump began polling his fans, asking, “Should I do the GOP debate?”
The respondents are evenly split, with half saying he should skip the event, which is the last GOP debate before the all-important Iowa caucuses.
Trump has been objecting to the involvement of Kelly, who challenged Trump during Fox’s first debate back in August and will be back in one of the moderator chairs on Thursday.
Trump says Kelly is biased and shouldn’t be allowed to moderate. Fox rejects that and says Trump is just “fearful” of the TV host.
Fox News responded to Trump’s poll with a tongue-in-cheek statement imagining Trump in the Oval Office: “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president — a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”
When Trump read the statement, he shot back with a tweet, calling it a “pathetic attempt by Fox News to try and build up ratings for the #GOPDebate.”
He added, “Without me they’d have no ratings!”
In an interview on Fox News on Tuesday evening, Trump was noncommittal about Thursday’s debate. But one thing is for sure: Kelly will be there, whether Trump is or not.
Fox News chairman Roger Ailes defended her on Tuesday afternoon, saying that the “entire network stands behind Kelly” and that she “will absolutely be on the debate stage on Thursday night.”
Kelly herself has stayed mum about the brouhaha.
On one level Trump’s bluster is building up anticipation for a possible “rematch” with Kelly.
But his Twitter poll on Tuesday afternoon may suggest a real reluctance to attend the debate. He could potentially cite the feedback from his fans as a reason for skipping it.
Trump also asked his followers on Facebook and Instagram for feedback on whether he should attend the debate.
In an Instagram video that coincided with his poll on Tuesday, he said, “Megyn Kelly’s really biased against me. She knows that, I know that, everybody knows that. Do you really think she can be fair at a debate?”
Many of the hundreds of replies urged him to attend the debate; a smaller number supported him skipping it; and some commenters mocked him for being afraid of Kelly.
Trump arguably has the most to lose on Thursday night since polls show him in a commanding position in the Republican race for president.
“From a political standpoint… the thing that makes sense for him is just to sit back. To stand up at this debate and say as little as possible. Because when you’re winning, you don’t want to stir the pot,” CNN anchor John Berman said on Tuesday’s “New Day.”
Then again, pot-stirring is something “he’s really good at,” CNN media analyst Bill Carter said.
Carter suggested that Trump has “planted” the idea that Kelly will be unfair “so that maybe she isn’t as tough as she would be.”
Earlier in the week, after Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Kelly treats him “really unfairly,” Fox said: “Sooner or later Donald Trump, even if he’s president, is going to have to learn that he doesn’t get to pick the journalists — we’re very surprised he’s willing to show that much fear about being questioned by Megyn Kelly.”