Donald Trump skips the debates for the Republican preliminaries of the presidential election. That writes the former US president on his social medium Truth Social. “The public knows who I am and how successful my presidency has been,” Trump said. In capital letters: “That’s why I don’t go to the debates!”
In the same message, Trump credits himself with a “legendary” lead in the polls over his Republican rivals. He is indeed well ahead, according to the weighted average of the news site FiveThirtyEight, which puts him 39.5 percentage points above his main rival Ron DeSantis. Trump writes that DeSantis “crashes like a sick bird”.
Mike Pence, vice president under Trump from 2017 to 2021 and current competitor for the Republican presidential nomination, does not immediately assume that Trump will indeed stay away from the upcoming debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. against news channel ABC News he says: “I served with him for a long time, and one thing I learned about him then is that it is not over until it is over.”
Tucker Carlson
According to The New York Times Trump has been asking employees and supporters for weeks whether he should participate in the first debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday. Party chairman Ronna McDaniel is said to have personally traveled to a Trump golf club in New Jersey to persuade him, as did Fox News executives.
Instead of the debate, Trump is said to be planning a televised interview with ultra-conservative host Tucker Carlson. That would be painful for Fox News, the channel Carlson left in April and which hosts the debate in Milwaukee.
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