Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pressed Donald Trump Wednesday evening to go “mano a mano” with him in a debate match Saturday night after the NY billionaire refused to attend the GOP presidential debate Thursday night.
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Donald Trump continued his onslaught on Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Thursday, retweeting a follower who criticized a photo shoot she did for GQ Magazine.
Experts say Trump’s boycott is a gamble, since the businessman leads Cruz by only about 5 percentage points in Iowa in the Real Clear Politics average of polls.
Instead of facing Cruz and five other GOP rivals – including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie – in the debate, Trump is planning to host a rally to raise money for military veterans at the same time, in a venue about two miles away.
Meanwhile, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough reported on air that Fox News was reaching out to Trump. “I don’t think she’s good at what she does and I think she’s highly overrated”. Some 24 million viewers watched the first battle between Trump, Kelly, and the nine other top Republican hopefuls In August.
“I was all set to do the debate, I came here to do the debate”, he said.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio called Trump’s decision to skip the debate, and Cruz’s one-on-one challenge an “interesting sideshow”. After that debate, Mr. Trump made similarly offensive comments about Ms. Kelly.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on Fox News program, Fox and Friends on Wednesday called the affair “a lot of drama” that most Iowa caucus-goers would likely tune out. “Megyn Kelly’s really biased against me”, he said in a video posted to his Instagram account.
“But when they sent out the wise-guy press release done by some PR person, I said: ‘Bye bye'”.
CNBC’s chief political correspondent John Harwood felt the ire of Trump last October when he asked the candidate, “Is this a comic-book version of a presidential campaign?”
Trump has taken heat from conservative commentators as well as his Republican primary rivals for his decision to boycott the Thursday night debate.
Tonight’s GOP debate will be the last time for those candidates to express their views to voters and donors on a large scale ahead of the Iowa caucus. “You have 60 seconds right off the top to tell any of the moderators you’re a pinhead, your questions are unfair and here is why and here is what I want to say”.
O’Reilly finished their exchange by complimenting Trump for coming onto the network for the interview despite his complaints about Fox.
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“With me, they’re dealing with somebody that’s a little bit different”, he said. “Mr. Trump doesn’t play games”.
