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Why is Donald Trump Skipping the First Debate?

This wasn’t something I expected him to do.

Lauren Elizabeth
3 min readAug 19, 2023
Photo by Darren Halstead on Unsplash

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve definitely been looking forward to watching Donald Trump during the first GOP primary debate for the 2024 election. I don’t care how much we might despise him on the left the man knows how to debate, particularly against his fellow Republicans. I really wanted to hear what he had to say to Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence in particular, and how they handled it. Of course, watching his exchanges with Chris Christie would have been incredibly entertaining as well.

But, in a move that was a little bit of a surprise in my view, Trump decided he will not be participating in the debate next week.

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan with The New York Times wrote:

Former President Donald J. Trump plans to upstage the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday by sitting for an online interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, according to multiple people briefed on the matter.

In the past 24 hours, Mr. Trump has told people close to him that he has made up his mind and will skip the debate in Milwaukee, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Trump is notoriously mercurial, and left himself something of an out to…

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Lauren Elizabeth
Lauren Elizabeth

Written by Lauren Elizabeth

Lauren is a writer & leftist with analysis on topics related to politics & policy. She can be reached at LaurenMartinchek@gmail.com or Twitter @xlauren_mx

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