Photo: Getty Images
By pulling out of this Thursday’s GOP debate, Donald Trump shows a level of pettiness that only reminds voters his campaign is a joke
The New York Times confirmed Tuesday evening that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump would sit out Thursday’s debate in Iowa, just days before the Iowa caucuses kick off primary voting.
Does it really matter if Trump misses one of what feels like a thousand debates, all of which cover the same ground ad nauseam? No, not really.
No matter whether or not Trump showed up to the debate hosted by Fox News, Trump would still find his way towards the center of attention, but that’s not what’s at issue here, which is Trump’s cowardice.
The reason Trump is choosing to skip the Iowa debate isn’t because he doesn’t feel like he needs to be there, or that the current debate structure is both silly an pointless with so many candidates vying for a couple minutes to snipe at one another, no.
Trump simply doesn’t like Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
The acrimony between Trump and Kelly is pretty well documented, stemming from their back and forth during an earlier debate in August.
That debate, which made the oft-derided Kelly come off like a feminist folk heroine, set off an ongoing war of words between Trump and Fox News that brought with it some rather interesting comments from Trump, who remarked on Kelly during an appearance on CNN, saying: “She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions…and you know, you could see that there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
This is a man who wants to be president of the United States.
Now while such behavior from Trump is pretty much expected, if not hoped for, that he would let pettiness win out while refusing to face Kelly again during a debate simply looks feckless and puts Trump squarely in the role of being a coward, no matter how he wants to spin it.
And spin it he has, by saying that Fox News is the real loser with his absence.
“Let’s see how they do at the debate,” Trump was quoted as saying during a rally Tuesday. “Let’s see how many people watch.”
It’s possible that the greatest trick that Trump ever pulled was to make Fox News look like a sympathetic media outlet, quite the feat for a network that feasts on rhetoric and demagoguery. In the wake of Trump’s announcement, Fox News put out a statement of their own insinuating that Trump’s team may have threatened Kelly in some way.
Statement from Fox News spokesperson also cites Trump campaign for "terrorizations": pic.twitter.com/8kgP98ptUo
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) January 27, 2016
Again, this is someone who claims to want to be president of the United States.
And even though Trump is turning tail like a coward, his star grows ever-brighter as his opponents, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who immediately offered to stage a one-on-one debate with Trump in Iowa, only solidifying just how much of a circus this election has become, even before voting begins.
Even as his opponents slam him, Trump continues to look good, largely because his base somehow seem him as a change agent being victimized by the mainstream media (yes, Fox News is mainstream when it comes to bashing Trump, apparently) and by other candidates who clearly presume that he’ll be the nominee.
Again, it doesn’t really matter if Trump shows or not, but in one important way, it absolutely does:
How can someone defeat terrorists if they're afraid of a debate moderator?
— Scott Weinberg (@scottEweinberg) January 27, 2016
How can anyone reasonable look at any of these shenanigans and come away thinking that Trump would make for a great president? How could anyone see these games at play and take Trump seriously as the leader of the free world, a man who couldn’t even deal with Megyn Kelly at a debate that will only make his lunatic fringe fandom love him more?
It’s one thing to label Trump a coward, because he is, but the bigger problem, the problem that faces America in the months ahead is that, all things considered, his rabid base may be even bigger cowards.
Hashim R. Hathaway (Uncle Shimbo) is the host of the Never Daunted Radio Network, and proud father to NeverDaunted.Net. You can reach him on Twitter @NeverDauntedNet