Donald Trump just dumped Fox News.
The Republican front-runner’s campaign confirmed Tuesday night that Trump will not take part in Thursday’s GOP debate in Des Moines, Iowa.
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“He’s definitely not participating in the Fox News debate,” Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told the Washington Post. “His word is his bond.”
Earlier in the day, Trump told Michael Savage on “Savage Nation” that his attendance was up in the air.
“Well, we’re looking at it. I don’t think [Megyn Kelly] can be fair,” said Trump. “I never thought she was a good professional. We’re looking at it. We’ll see. I want to do it. I love the debates. According to every poll I’ve won all five debates.”
At a press conference in Marshalltown, Iowa, Trump told reporters that he was likely to skip the debate because he’s incensed with how Fox News has treated him.
At the press conference, Trump called Kelly a “lightweight” and said she’s “not a reporter.”
Lewandowki said Trump would still be in Iowa during the debates, but would instead host a campaign fundraiser.
“We’ll have an event here in Iowa, with potentially another network, to raise money for wounded warriors,” Lewandowski said. “And Fox will go from probably having 24 million viewers to about 2 million.”
Trump and Fox have navigated a fragile truce since the network’s Aug. 6 Republican presidential debate. The billionaire had called Kelly a “bimbo” and “the biggest loser” for asking him about the way he dealt with women.
“The questions to me were not nice, I didn’t think they were appropriate, and I think Megyn behaved very badly personally,” Trump said at the time, WND reported Aug. 7, 2015.
A grinning Megyn Kelly led her Tuesday night edition of “The Kelly File” with news of Trump’s announcement.
She showed video of the first question she posed to Trump in the August debate.
“I maintain it was a tough but fair question,” she said.
Kelly continued, “Trump is not used to not controlling things, but he doesn’t get to control the media.”
Fox News’ Brit Hume predicted, “This act by Trump will not hurt him a bit among his hard-core followers.”
Kelly declared, “The debate will go on … with or without Mr. Trump.”
Last Friday, Kelly put together a panel of guests to discuss an issue of the National Review dedicated to bashing the Republican front-runner, which prompted him to again question her objectivity.
Trump said the final straw was Fox News’ response to his threat to sit out the debate.
A network spokesperson mocked Trump to several media outlets, saying:
“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,” the statement read.
Trump fumed over those remarks at the Tuesday press conference, calling it a “wise-guy press release” and accusing Fox chairman and CEO Roger Ailes of “playing games.”
“I didn’t like the fact that they sent out press releases toying, talking about Putin and playing games,” Trump said. “I don’t know what games Roger Ailes is playing or what’s wrong over there. But when they sent out that press release talking about it – I said what are these people, playing games? So most likely I won’t be doing the debate.”
Lewandowski told the Post that when Trump saw the statement, his reply was, “Bye bye.”
Trump said Fox’s response was “written by a child.”
The following is a full statement released by the Trump campaign Tuesday evening:
As someone who wrote one of the best-selling books of all time, The Art of the Deal, who has built an incredible company, including some of the most valuable and iconic assets in the world, and as someone who has a personal net worth of many billions of dollars, 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), whereas 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 them all, in particular the last one. Whereas he has always been a job creator and not a debater, he nevertheless truly enjoys the debating process – and it has been very good for him, both in the polls and popularity.
He will not be participating in the Fox News debate and will instead host an event in Iowa to raise money for the Veterans and Wounded Warriors, who have been treated so horribly by our all talk, no action politicians. Like running for office as an extremely successful person, this takes guts and it is the kind [of] mentality our country needs in order to Make America Great Again.
In a separate statement on Tuesday afternoon, Ailes said the “entire network stands behind Kelly” and that she “will absolutely be on the debate stage on Thursday night.”
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