Instead of appearing along the motley crew of bickering GOP candidates for the first GOP debate, hosted by Fox News, former President Donald Trump sat down for an interview with former Fox News channel host Tucker Carlson. Predictably, their views on Twitter blew the GOP debate’s ratings out of the water, with tens upon tens of millions of people viewing the Tucker-Trump interview and a measly few million watching the GOP debate.
Now Trump is deciding whether to stay aloof from the workings of the GOP primary process and run on his record, or jump into the primary fight with a relish to drum up support for his campaign by verbally abusing the RINOS, like he did in 2016.
He has generally been leaning towards avoiding the debates and acting like the heir presumptive, as he is leading all the other candidates by a massive margin and the race looks like a foregone conclusion. However, in a recent radio interview, he indicated that he might appear for the second debate.
That was on Todd Starnes’ radio show, during which Trump was asked, “Do you anticipate at some point jumping into the debates?” Responding, he left the door open ever so slightly, telling Starnes, “I might. I mean, you know, it’s possible. I liked debating. I guess I won because of the debates.”
Continuing, he went on to indicate that he probably would not do so, suggesting that the risk-reward just wasn’t their for a debate performance. He said, “You know, they’ve been very good to me. So I might. But at this moment, I’m leading by so much that it seems to be foolish to do it.”
Starnes also asked Trump what was going on over at Fox News after it claimed that his poll numbers dropped when he did not appear at its debate. Trump first said FNC was simply wrong in its polling, telling Starnes, “Well, he’s incorrect because most of the polls, and I’m way ahead in Emerson, too, but most of the polls literally have me going up a lot since the debate, if you can call it that.”
He then went on to say that his state-level results are up quite substantially, saying, “They’ll pick one poll where if you go down a little bit, they’ll use that one poll, but they won’t use 15 polls or a lot of the polls where you go up. But we’ve gone up very substantially, and we’ve gone up in just about every state.”
Commenting on Truth Social about one such poll showing him to be in a commanding lead, the former president said, “New CBS POLL, just out, has me leading the field by “legendary” numbers. TRUMP 62%, 46 Points above DeSanctimonious (who is crashing like an ailing bird!), Ramaswamy 7%, Pence 5%, Scott 3%, Haley 2%, Sloppy Chris Christie 2%, “Aida” Hutchinson 1%. The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had, with Energy Independence, Strong Borders & Military, Biggest EVER Tax & Regulation Cuts, No Inflation, Strongest Economy in History, & much more. I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!“
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