Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler blasted Trump’s decision as “erratic” and foolish behavior from a presidential hopeful, especially considering a large segment of voters say they have not finalized their support for a candidate.
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Afterward, Fox News responded with this presumably hyperbolic statement: “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”.
Lewandowski ruled out Trump’s participation just a few minutes after Trump himself said he would “most likely” hold a competing event in Iowa during the debate.
The feud with Kelly dates to the first GOP debate in August, when Kelly – a moderator – questioned Trump about his past comments disparaging women.
His campaign sought to capitalize on the good news, fund-raising on Twitter after his inclusion was announced on Fox News. The news broke at about 6:30 p.m. – at around 7:00 p.m., Cruz was on the radio challenging Trump to a debate of his own.
An hour later, Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told The Washington Post that Trump would “definitely not” participate. “They can’t toy with me like they toy with everybody else”, he said. If Trump’s rivals are smart, they will focus on this, that Trump’s refusal to attend the debate Thursday is a snub of the voters, not Ms. Kelly. He received more than twice as much airtime on Fox News from May through December as any other Republican candidate. “We think Donald Trump’s decision to skip tomorrow night’s debate could backfire for two reasons”, said Greg Valliere, chief global strategist at Horizon Investments.
The network eventually agreed to the demands and Trump appeared at the debate. “And you’re going to be afraid of Vladimir Putin”, he added, referring to the Russian president.
“He doesn’t get to control the media”, she said of Trump.
But analysts were in agreement that, the debate boycott is unlikely to hurt Trump in the national polls even as he is accused of ducking face-to-face confrontations with his opponents and questions from debate moderators.
Trump was also widely seen as the candidate best able to win in November with 63 percent of Republicans saying so, compared with 16 percent who saw Cruz as best positioned to win and 10 percent who named Rubio.
“These kinds of theatrics by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are an entertaining sideshow, but they have nothing to do with defeating Hillary Clinton”, Rubio said. “I don’t have any axe to grind with either one of them”, he said.
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If a whopping 200,000 Iowa Republicans turn out to caucus, Trump would lead 32% to 21% over Cruz. In a call last Saturday with a Fox News executive, Lewandowski stated that Megyn had a “rough couple of days after that last debate” and he “would hate to have her go through that again.’ Lewandowski was warned not to level any more threats, but he continued to do so”.
