What is the point of a presidential debate when the candidate who has more than 50% of the intention to vote is not only not going to be present, but also, at that same time, is going to give an interview on a social network?
That is the unprecedented situation that the conservative television network Fox News is facing today, Wednesday, which celebrates the debate between the Republican candidates for the presidency in 2024. Because Donald Trump which, according to a survey by the YouGov company for the CBS television network, has 62% of the intention to vote among Republicans who will not attend. That makes the debate literally a second-tier argument, in which the two candidates with the most support – the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and the businessman Vivek Ramaswami – have a support of 16% and 7%, respectively, according to the same survey.
The Governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, he could cancel his attendance at the last moment because this morning he ruptured his Achilles tendon playing basketball. With a 1% voting intention, it seems unlikely that anyone will notice his absence.
Trump has chosen not to attend for various reasons. The official one is that he is not going to lower himself to debate with candidates who, in the best of cases, have a quarter of his support. At most, he has said on his Truth social network, he will use the debate to see if he can draw someone who can be your vice presidential candidate. Even that probability is remote, given that Trump does not want as his running mate a politician with national presidential ambitions who will overshadow him, and certainly not someone who has competed with him for the nomination.
But there is another, deeper reason, less egocentric, and very revealing of the struggle for power within the American right. Trump does not go to Fox News, but at the same time he gives an interview to Tucker Carlson, the former star of that television network, who fired him due to fears that his emails and racist statements would be leaked to the media, such as when he sent an email about a lynching of an African American with the phrase “this is not how white men fight.”