'He Doesn’t Want To Show Up': Trump Could Sit Down With Tucker Carlson Instead of Attending First GOP Debate

The suggestion seems to have some traction as reported by our esteemed colleague Randy DeSoto writing for The Western Journal. He commented on Twitter, "Trump is giving strong signals that he'll skip the @FoxNews first @GOP presidential debate."

Carlson hosted the first Republican presidential summit hosted by The Blaze and The Family Leader on July 14th which was viewed over 688,000 times on YouTube. In the aftermath of disastrous showings from former Vice President Mike Pence (R-IN) and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), both have seen faltering polls while Vivek Ramaswamy has seen a substantial uptick following his widely praised performance. Trump declined to attend the event. 

The 45th president also expressed dismay that the debate is to be hosted by Fox News, but as of an interview with Maria Bartiromo, he hadn't committed to attending or not. 

“Well you know, it’s quite an easy question normally. Ronald Reagan didn’t do it and a lot of other people didn’t do it. When you have a big lead, you don’t do it,” Trump told the Fox host.

“We have a lead of 50 and 60 points in some cases,” he continued. “You’re leading people by 50 and 60 points, you say why would you be doing a debate? It’s actually not fair. Why would you let somebody that’s at zero or one or two or three be popping you with questions?”

It would hardly be unusual for Trump to eschew the debate, particularly from a standpoint of reach. Simply put, with a viewership of 24 million or so, according to Washington Post, at play for the debate, Tucker Carlson simply has more viewers.

In an interview as reported by WaPo, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer said it would be "insane" for Trump to participate.

“Fox can’t be surprised after the way that they’ve handled Trump that he doesn’t want to show up,” Spicer said. “They’ve gone out of their way to snub the guy, which is their prerogative, but then you can’t get mad when he doesn’t want to go to your party.”

Spicer suspected that Trump would "counterprogram" as he did in 2016, hosting a lavish rally instead of joining a Fox debate hosted by Megyn Kelly after the two clashed in August 2015. And given Carlson's dramatic departure from Fox, there could hardly be a greater thumb of the nose toward the network than for Trump to bring the boost in viewers to 'Tucker on Twitter.'

You can follow Matt Holloway on Facebook, Twitter, TruthSocial, Gettr, Gab & Parler.