Donald Trump on Tuesday bowed out of the final Republican presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses, saying Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly is “a lightweight”. “Do you really think she could be fair at a debate?”
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During an interview with CNN on Monday, Trump suggested he might not attend Thursday’s debate – which will also feature New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, one of Trump’s 11 rivals for the GOP debate. “Everybody knows my views and I think my views are very plain”, Trump said.
Trump fumed over those remarks at the Tuesday press conference, calling it a “wise-guy press release” and accusing Fox and network president Roger Ailes of “playing games”.
“Nothing’s 100 percent, I’m not 100 percent”, Trump said.
Instead, Trump said, he will probably hold a type of fundraiser for veterans or wounded warriors.
The fued has continued, at a low level, for the last few months, but it flared up again recently when Fox announced that Kelly would be moderating the next Fox News debate this Thursday.
Trump did not mention the debate boycott during the Marshalltown event in a high school basketball gym, a question-and-answer session with a local talk show host. Marco Rubio on the campaign trail in Iowa this week, also asked this week whether Trump had repented for his marital infidelities. On Tuesday, he turned to his Instagram to further blast Kelly, proclaiming in a video: “Megyn Kelly is really biased against me”. In the days following the debate, Trump described the debate encounter with her by saying Kelly had “blood coming out her wherever”.
“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”, a spokesperson for the network said today, in a statement that looked like an attempt to out-Trump Trump.
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Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who failed to qualify for the main event in the last debate, made the cut this time. “So most likely I won’t be doing the debate”.
