Santorum: GOP will treat Trump ‘fairly’

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Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) said on Sunday that Republican leadership will treat Donald Trump with respect during the 2016 presidential race.

{mosads}“The Republican Party is going to treat every candidate fairly,” Santorum told host Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week.”

“They have rules,” he said. “And they’re going to live by those rules.”

“And Donald Trump, like every other candidate, will rise and fall,” said Santorum, himself a 2016 Republican presidential candidate.

“And I don’t have any fear that Donald Trump is somehow going to be treated unfairly and therefore run as a third-party candidate.”

Santorum’s remarks come as Republicans gear up for their first televised presidential debates later this week.

The former lawmaker slammed his party’s leadership for its qualifications to participate in the Fox News contests scheduled for Thursday evening.

“These polls, these national polls are irrelevant,” Santorum said of Fox News’s rules concerning average national polling numbers.

“And unfortunately, the networks and the RNC have gone along with this irrelevant measure of legitimacy of candidacy and then have the ability to influence who is in the top 10 by the amount of coverage they get and the amount of advertising dollars,” he said.

“And so this is an arbitrary figure,” Santorum said of the Republican National Committee’s agreement with Fox News. “That’s wrong.”

Fox News is partitioning the crowded GOP field into two debates based on an average of their national polling numbers.

Santorum argued on Sunday that he is unconcerned with whether he makes the main stage debate on Thursday evening.

“I’m not really worried about what’s happening here in August,” he said.

“These are really good, qualified men and women, and I guarantee you someone in that first debate is going to be someone who is going to get a lot of delegates come next year,” Santorum said of Fox News’s runoff debate on Aug. 6.

“And it will be another incident where the RNC and the national media missed it.”