POLITICS
Why hasn’t Donald Trump gone to any of the Republican primary debates?
Another Republican presidential candidate debate is taking place on Wednesday night and the frontrunners is still refusing to attend.
Republican primary voters will not have the opportunity to see Donald Trump debate with his challengers within the party on Wednesday evening. The former president has not taken part in any of the debates so far and that is not going to change in Alabama.
Trump does not see it necessary to go to the debates due to being so far ahead in the polls.
“The new poll that just came out from CBS has me leading the field with ‘legendary’ numbers... SO, I WILL NOT BE IN THE DEBATES,” Trump wrote in August via Truth Social.
Skipping the debates has not hurt Trump’s popularity with Republican voters, either. Support for the former president has actually risen to nearly 60% as of 6 December, up from 50% from the time of the first debate. Clearly the strategy is working.
Donald Trump competes with debate for viewers
Instead of attending the first presidential debate, Donald Trump appeared on Tucker Carlson’s new show on X, formally known as Twitter. The debate was watched by approximately 13 million people. The Trump campaign boasted that his interview had been seen by over 100 million people. However, this claim was misleading because a “view” was counted even if an individual had only come across a tweet about the interview and did not actually watch the conversation.
During the second debate, Donald Trump chose to skip the event and instead visited Michigan. Although the visit was promoted as an occasion to meet autoworkers during the United Auto Workers’ historic strike, the location chosen was actually non-unionized. UAW President Sean Fain openly expressed his lack of support for Trump and saw no advantage in meeting with the GOP frontrunner, but that didn’t stop Trump from trying to convince UAW to endorse his candidacy.
Will Donald Trump attend the fourth debate?
Donald Trump has not confirmed that he will skip the debate, but based on his previous comments, an appearance by him is unlikely. Additionally, even if Trump did want to participate, he failed to meet the eligibility criteria.
Although he has received sufficient donations and polls indicate that he has significantly more support than required to join the debate, his refusal to sign an agreement to support the primary winner disqualifies him.