Trump quits debate

Donald Trump quits debate to stay center stage

The master of earned media gets himself more with six days left until Iowa.

By Shane Goldmacher, Ben Schreckinger and Katie Glueck

Donald Trump did it again.

With less than 150 hours before the Iowa caucuses, Trump thrust himself squarely into the center of the political conversation and the news cycle with his surprise declaration that he would boycott the final debate before voting begins in Iowa.

Trump has blustered about boycotting debates multiples times before but never followed through. But the rhetoric Tuesday from Trump and his campaign team was, by far, the sternest and most forceful to date.

Ted Cruz, Trump’s chief Iowa rival, immediately challenged Trump to a one-on-one debate, as his aides and supporters tried to get the hashtag “#DonaldDuck” trending on Twitter.

At a combative press conference before a rally here, Trump said he wouldn’t participate in Thursday’s Fox News showdown because co-moderator Megyn Kelly is biased against him, and because he found Fox’s response to his concerns childish.

“Let's see how they do at the debate,” Trump said. “Let's see how many people watch.”

The 2016 GOP debates have drawn record audiences and Trump and his team have seemed to relish their leverage over the networks, which are converting those audiences into big ad dollars. Back in August, Trump challenged CNN to give $10 million to charity. The network didn’t. He appeared at its debate anyway.

Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told reporters that plans are already in the works for a competing event when Thursday’s debate is scheduled to air.

“We’ll have an event here in Iowa, with potentially another network, to raise money for Wounded Warriors and Fox will go from having probably 24 million viewers for the debate to, you know, 2 million viewers,” Lewandowski said.

Fox responded with heated rhetoric of its own.

"Capitulating to politicians’ ultimatums about a debate moderator violates all journalistic standards, as do threats, including the one leveled by Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski toward Megyn Kelly," the network stated, suggesting that Lewandowski had basically threatened Kelly with more vitriol.

"We can’t give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees," the network added.

This is not the first time Trump has played hardball with a debate host. After the mogul looked physically fatigued at a marathon three-hour CNN debate in September, he threatened in October to withdraw from the following debate if its host, CNBC, did not limit the debate’s length to two hours. A day after the businessman threatened withdrawal, the network set the length of its debate to two hours, and Trump took credit for the time limit.

Trump has also successfully forced media outlets that are critical of him to lose their status as debate hosts. After Trump opined that the New Hampshire Union Leader, which had run editorials critical of him, should not be allowed to co-sponsor a debate in February, host ABC dumped the newspaper from the event. After National Review ran an anti-Trump issue earlier this month, the Republican National Committee dumped the conservative magazine from co-sponsoring another debate.

Lewandowski said that to his knowledge no one from the campaign, including Trump, has spoken to Fox News CEO Roger Ailes about the decision. Lewandowski also said the campaign did not give a heads-up to the Republican National Committee before pulling out of the debate.

"Obviously we would love all of the candidates to participate in the debate but each campaign ultimately makes their own decision about what's in their best interest,” said Sean Spicer, chief strategist for the RNC.

In his press conference, Trump continued his months-long tirade against Kelly, who moderated the first GOP debate last August, calling her a “lightweight” and “third-rate reporter.”

Kelly fired back on her own Fox program Tuesday night. "He doesn't get to control the media,” she said. “I’ll be there…The debate will go on with or without Mr. Trump."

But he suggested the breaking point was actually a sarcastic press statement Fox News had released earlier Tuesday. It read: “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.”

Trump’s campaign issued a statement on the debate late Tuesday: "Mr. Trump knows a bad deal when he sees one. FOX News is making tens of millions of dollars on debates, and setting ratings records (the highest in history), where as in previous years they were low-rated afterthoughts. Unlike the very stupid, highly incompetent people running our country into the ground, Mr. Trump knows when to walk away. Roger Ailes and FOX News think they can toy with him, but Mr. Trump doesn’t play games. There have already been six debates, and according to all online debate polls including Drudge, Slate, Time Magazine, and many others, Mr. Trump has won all of them, in particular the last one.”

Cruz picked up the same line as Fox in challenging Trump to a one-on-one debate in Fairfield, Iowa. "Just a few minutes ago, the news broke that Donald Trump is refusing to attend the debate here in Iowa on Thursday," he said to a mixture of boos and applause. "He announced he will not be there. Apparently Megyn Kelly is really, really scary."

The crowd laughed.

"This race is a dead heat between Donald and me, we are effectively tied in the state of Iowa. If he is unwilling to stand on the debate stage with the other candidates, I would like to invite Donald right now to engage in a one-on-one debate with me, anytime between now and the Iowa Caucuses,” he said.

He ticked through a list of potential moderators from conservative talk radio, including Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity—but if they are “too scary,” Cruz mocked, then he and Trump could “do 90 minute, Lincoln-Douglas, mano-a-mano, Donald and me. He can lay out his vision for this country, I can lay out my vision in front of the men and women of Iowa.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Cruz’s challenge.