Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign manager said Wednesday he doesn’t think there’s a way that Mr. Trump will participate in Thursday’s GOP debate and said other campaigns have asked whether they could join Mr. Trump at his own planned event in Iowa.
“I just don’t think so,” Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when asked if there was any chance Mr. Trump would participate in the debate.
“I mean what you have with Mr. Trump is you have a clear leader,” he said. “A person who — he said it best — is not going to be toyed with. A person who understands when a bad deal is in front of him and is ready to walk away from a bad deal. Something that this country should be able to do.”
Mr. Trump on Tuesday had taken issue with a statement Fox News released after he had threatened to boycott the debate if Fox News host Megyn Kelly was one of the moderators. Mr. Trump thought Ms. Kelly treated him unfairly in the first GOP debate last August.
“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 Fox statement said.
Mr. Lewandowski said Ms. Kelly is “totally obsessed with Mr. Trump.”
SEE ALSO: Donald Trump not participating in Fox News debate
The campaign said Mr. Trump 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.”
“I had a number of calls yesterday with some of the other campaigns [that] said hey, can we come and join you in raising money for the wounded warriors and the veterans because, you know, Fox isn’t going to be fair to you — what makes ’em think they’re going to be fair to us?” Mr. Lewandowski said.
“Mr. Trump can answer any question. He’s running for president of the United States, and he’s done it time and time again,” he said. “But what they’re doing with Megyn Kelly, and moreover with Roger Ailes with the statement that they put out goading Mr. Trump … it’s clearly that Fox thought it was appropriate to mock Mr. Trump, but at the end of the day, Mr. Trump is going to have the last laugh.”
A Fox News spokesperson said Mr. Trump’s refusal to debate seven of his fellow presidential candidate is “near unprecedented.”
“We’re not sure how Iowans are going to feel about him walking away from them at the last minute, but it should be clear to the American public by now that this is rooted in one thing — Megyn Kelly, whom he has viciously attacked since August and has now spent four days demanding be removed from the debate stage,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said Mr. Lewandowski made a threat toward Ms. Kelly.
“In a call on Saturday with a Fox News executive, Lewandowski stated that Megyn had a ’rough couple of days after that last debate’ and he ’would hate to have her go through that again,’ ” the spokesperson said. “Lewandowski was warned not to level any more threats, but he continued to do so. We can’t give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees.”
“Trump is still welcome at Thursday night’s debate and will be treated fairly, just as he has been during his 132 appearances on FOX News & FOX Business, but he can’t dictate the moderators or the questions,” the spokesperson said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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