Former president Donald Trump on Sunday said he doesn’t need to participate in any debates as he seeks his party’s nomination for next year’s presidential election, as nearly a dozen of his Republican primary rivals prepare to square off on Wednesday.
Writing on his own social media platform, Mr Trump said the US electorate “knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had”.
He added: “I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!”
However, at least one of Mr Trump’s children will be present at the debate. Donald Trump Jr and Kimberly Guilfoyle will be in attendance, according to The Daily Caller.
“We’re excited to see all of our friends in Milwaukee on Wednesday in support of President Trump. We’re confident that in 2024, GOP voters will reject the RINO establishment and re-nominate President Trump in a landslide,” they told the outlet.
Mr Trump has often mused about skipping the debates, citing his overwhelming lead among the Republican primary voters who will decide whether he appears on the ballot against President Joe Biden in November 2024.
In a June interview with Fox News, the ex-president asked why he’d “allow people at one per cent or two per cent and zero per cent to be hitting [him] with questions all night” when pressed on whether he’d attend the Milwaukee debate by Fox anchor Bret Baier, who is set to co-moderate the Fox-sponsored programme.
At least eight candidates have met a Republican National Committee polling and fundraising threshold for participation in the debate: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, ex-Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, ex-South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, and biotechnology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
The twice-impeached, quadruply indicted former chief executive, who easily met the GOP criteria to participate, has a history of skipping out on debate sessions when he does not feel he will be penalised by voters.
In 2020, he backed out of his second general election debate with Mr Biden after the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates decided the event would be a virtual one because he’d attended a prior debate after contracting Covid-19 and kept his diagnosis secret.
Four years earlier, he refused to participate in another Fox-sponsored debate amid a feud with then-anchor Megyn Kelly, instead choosing to host a rally that he billed as a fundraiser for veterans.
Mr Trump, who has frequently railed against the right-wing network since its analysts correctly predicted that he would lose Arizona’s electoral votes during the 2020 election, and more recently amid the network hosting frequent appearances by many of his primary rivals, is reportedly set to counterprogramme the Fox debate with a pre-taped interview with Tucker Carlson, the right-wing former Fox host who was fired from the network earlier this year.
Asked about the ex-president’s plans for Wednesday evening, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung replied: “We cannot confirm or deny — stay tuned”.
One of Mr Trump’s primary opponents, ex-New Jersey governor — and former ally to the ex-president — Chris Christie, has called him “a coward” and has said he lacks “the guts to show up” at a debate.
At the same time, DeSantis-backing Super PAC “Never Back Down” has released an advertisement that states Republicans “can’t afford a nominee who is too weak to debate,” though the ad does not attack Mr Trump directly.
The ex-president has also thus far refused to sign a Republican National Committee pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.
The pledge states: “I affirm that if I do not win the 2024 Republican nomination of President of the United States, I will honor the will of the primary voters and support the nominee in order to save our country and beat Joe Biden”.
With additional reporting by agencies
