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Donald Trump is executing an identical debate strategy that he deployed in 2016, right down to the same complaints and threats of boycotts against Fox News and their debate moderators.
Trump is currently threatening to boycott the first GOP primary debate on Wednesday August 23, citing his lead in the polls and what he projects to be unfair treatment by moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Not only is Trump threatening to skip the debate, according to three sources speaking to CNN, Trump is looking to counter the debate by offering his services to other networks — or even Tucker Carlson, who is reportedly considering the offer.
It’s also been reported that while Trump himself will not be in attendance, on stage or in the spin room, Trump surrogates apparently do have invites backstage and in the audience, including defeated Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Representatives Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz.
In January 2016, Trump boycotted a GOP debate after Fox News refused to remove Megyn Kelly as a co-moderator. This was after the first debate where Kelly called out comments Trump had made about women previously. Trump’s campaign later released a statement announcing a rally for veterans that countered the debate directly, which was carried by Jeff Zucker’s CNN. Trump also sat with Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, his favorite primary media hosts who granted him forty-one separate interviews during the primaries alone, ten of which were simply call-in segments. Trump is clearly deploying the same playbook he did in 2016, hoping a rival network takes his bait, which, as we learned to the tune of $3 billion in free unearned media during the 2016 primaries, they could not resist doing. The only questions are which network and which anchors? Will NBC offer up Chuck Todd for counterprogramming? Maybe CNN hosts another downhill with Anderson Cooper, or a furrowed-browed Jake Tapper who sets his Big Lie throat-clearing aside for Trump. Perhaps Carlson, who holds his own personal beef with Fox, takes Trump up on his offer.
If all else fails, maybe Trump holds another rally, which the networks will begin covering again, or moves his legally ill-advised Georgia presser, scheduled for 11 a.m. Monday, to the 23rd to counter the debate. No matter what happens, when it comes to Trump, the media not only lacks restraint, but has acted in the past as a co-conspirator in their elevation of his candidacy. That appears to once again be the strategy: all Trump, all the time, 24/7. Trump knows his gambit of sitting out the debates is contingent on the cameras following him instead of the field. The only question that remains: who will be his dance partner this time?
