Donald Trump is demanding that Megyn Kelly be removed as a moderator from the January 28 Fox News Republican debate and he’s threatening to hold a town hall televised by Fox’s competitors instead.
The slobbering approval on most Fox News shows and $30 million in free Fox airtime is not enough for Trump, apparently. Yesterday, he tweeted, “Based on @MegynKelly’s conflict of interest and bias she should not be allowed to be a moderator of the next debate.”
New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman followed up:
Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, indicated that Trump could walk away from the debate if Fox won’t exclude Kelly. “Let’s see what happens,” he told me. “It’s fair to say Mr. Trump is a significant ratings driver for these debates. If we aren’t on stage for some reason, they wouldn’t have the record 24 million viewers and would be back with 1-2 million people.”
…Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, told me Trump could stage his own televised town hall on Thursday night and let Fox’s rivals air it. “That would be a great idea,” he said.
The RNC is too timid to take a stand. From Sherman:
In the past, the Republican National Committee has banned media it deems unfair. It canceled a debate on NBC, and excluded the Manchester Union Leader and National Review after both outlets attacked Trump. But in this case, the RNC won't be getting involved. "It's up to Fox," Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee chief strategist, told me.
As I’ve previously written, Fox can’t not have Kelly moderate without looking like it’s capitulating to a candidate. The network did issue a statement saying, “Megyn Kelly has no conflict of interest. Donald Trump is just trying to build up the audience for Thursday’s debate, for which we thank him.”
Personally, I don’t think Trump can skip the debate without looking like a wuss, either. Although I’ve been critical of TV critic David Zurawik for wearing rose-colored glasses when looking at Fox, I think he nailed it here:
I think it’s about Trump fearing Kelly and trying to preempt tough questions from her—or, at least, give himself a potential out in trying to make it look as if it’s somehow personal or partisan if she drills him again with a tough query.
In other words, Trump’s boycott threat is just about as likely as the release of those supposedly amazing findings of his private birther investigation in Hawaii.
But will Kelly ask the tough questions? We’ll have to wait and see.
Caricatures of Donald Trump and Megyn Kelly by DonkeyHotey.
Donald and his flunkies are just showing—once again—how scared he is of a woman who won’t fawn over him. Megyn didn’t do anything to tRump, except ask him some questions that he was too fucking scared to answer. If a guy asked tRump the same questions, he’d have just called the guy a “loser” (tRump’s favorite word) and ignored the answer. But, with a woman, tRump’s going to go the extra mile and show his chauvinist pig side for the world to see.
