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It was roughly 24 hours ago when Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel voiced some misplaced optimism about her party’s upcoming presidential primary debate. When Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo noted that Donald Trump was unlikely to be on the stage in Milwaukee on Wednesday, the RNC chair told the host that she was still “holding out hope“ that the former president would participate.
Those hopes were dashed soon after. NBC News reported:
Donald Trump confirmed Sunday that he will skip the first Republican presidential primary debate Wednesday — and indicated he may not attend future ones, either. The former president wrote on his Truth Social media platform that polling shows him leading in the Republican primary field by such a wide margin that he doesn’t need to stand alongside his rivals on the debate stage.
It’s worth pausing to emphasize that the former president has now claimed he won’t participate in the debate, but Trump says all sorts of things, many of which prove to be wildly at odds with reality. Will he change his mind? I suppose anything's possible.
But given the circumstances, that seems unlikely. In fact, Trump has spent months telegraphing this decision, effectively closing the door long before yesterday’s announcement.
In April, for example, the Republican wrote to his social media platform that he hadn’t approved the RNC’s debate schedule — the implicit suggestion was that he somehow still maintained control over the party — before adding that he didn’t see the point in participating in the events. As the former president described it at the time, he had “seemingly insurmountable numbers”; he didn’t trust “hostile Networks”; and he had no intention of being “libeled and abused” by his intra-party rivals.
In the weeks and months that followed, Trump repeatedly left little doubt that he wouldn’t take the stage, even going so far as to suggest that he didn’t consider Fox News — the co-host of this week’s gathering — to be a reliable enough political ally.
Last night’s statement, in other words, simply confirmed what already seemed obvious. “The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had,” Trump wrote. “I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!”
The fact that he used the word “debates” left open the possibility that the former president will skip all of his party’s primary debates, not just this week’s event.
As a tactical matter, the decision poses at least some modest risks for the GOP frontrunner. By skipping debates, Trump gives the impression of being scared of his opponents’ attacks, while simultaneously suggesting he’s afraid of tough questions about his many scandals and failed record.
But there’s an obvious logic behind the strategy, too: Trump is the prohibitive favorite for his party’s nomination. He has little to gain from sharing a stage with his GOP foes and plenty to lose as they try to bring him down a peg. What’s more, let’s not forget that as a candidate in 2016, Trump also skipped more than one primary debate, and the party’s voters didn’t much care.
Given all of this, it would’ve been far more surprising if Trump had made the opposite decision.
As for who will be on the stage in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, that’s proving to be far more complicated than expected. “Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas said on Sunday that he had met the qualification criteria for the first Republican presidential debate this week, which would make him the eighth candidate to qualify,” The New York Times reported overnight. “Or possibly the ninth. Perhaps the 10th? It depends whom you ask — and believe.”
In the aforementioned Fox interview, the RNC’s McDaniel said seven candidates have “officially“ qualified — they’ve met the donor threshold, the polling threshold, and signed the pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee — and we know who those seven are. In alphabetical order: North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Ambassador Nikki Haley, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, and Sen. Tim Scott. Trump would’ve qualified if he signed the pledge.
But once we look past the “official” septet, the picture gets murky. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, for example, announced that he’d qualified for the debate, but RNC officials suggested his claims weren’t quite true. Hutchinson appears to have met the thresholds, but the RNC hasn’t yet verified his fundraising totals.
Oddly enough, businessman Perry Johnson, who’s generally overlooked as a Republican contender, also appears to have qualified for the first debate, though the RNC hasn’t confirmed his claims, either.
The deadline for meeting the requirements is tonight. Watch this space.