Former President Trump’s decision to sit out this week’s first Republican primary debate is his sharpest rebuke yet of Fox News, the network broadcasting the widely anticipated prime-time television event.
Trump, the front-runner for his party’s nomination, has agreed instead to participate in an online interview with Tucker Carlson. By sitting down with the firebrand conservative commentator whom Fox pulled off its air earlier this year, he doubly spurns the network.
Trump’s high-profile snubbing underscores the increasingly frosty relationships among the former president, the leading cable news channel and a top right-wing commentator who is trying to maintain his status as a GOP thought leader ahead of the 2024 election without the Fox platform he used for years to grow his brand.
In a social media post late Sunday, Trump confirmed he does not plan to participate in Wednesday’s event or any GOP debates, citing his large lead in most primary polls.
“The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had,” the former president wrote of his decision, which had been rumored for weeks prior.
The former president’s confirmation of his intention to skip the debate came just days after a New York Times report revealed Trump agreed to instead sit with Carlson for an interview, a major nod to one of his favorite media figures that is also being widely regarded as an affront to the host’s former network.
As top executives and anchors at Fox in recent weeks lobbied Trump to attend the first debate, the former president has reportedly countered with complaints about the coverage he has been receiving on the network and expressed bewilderment that the conservative media juggernaut had taken Carlson off the air.
Carlson was ousted from his prime-time perch at Fox days after it agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787 million to settle defamation claims it made against the network in court. The claims were in connection with the outlet’s airing of false statements about voter fraud being pushed after the 2020 election by Trump and his allies.
In the months before he was ousted by Fox, Carlson sparked bipartisan backlash for his commentary on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, which came as the former president refused to concede defeat, calling the event in one broadcast “mostly peaceful chaos.”
Carlson, who is still under contract with the network, has not spoken publicly about what led to his ouster, but the pundit’s allies and supporters have argued his firing amounts to an attempt by Fox to suppress his anti-establishment viewpoints — a political sentiment shared by many of Trump’s supporters.
Underscoring the complexity of the Trump-Carlson-Fox dynamic is a trove of internal communications from top Fox hosts, which were made public earlier this year as part of the Dominion litigation. It included communications from Carlson, showing him blasting Trump and throwing cold water on his assertions about voter fraud.
“I hate him passionately,” Carlson wrote of Trump in one message, later expressing exasperation about the claims of voter fraud being put forth by the president’s lawyers and aides on Fox’s airwaves.
Other messages from Carlson showed the host disparaging female leadership at Fox and using racially divisive language while describing his feelings watching the violence that broke out during Jan. 6 attack.
Since being ousted, Carlson has started an online version of his popular prime-time show on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
And while he has published a number of interviews with controversial internet influencers, pop culture figures and political candidates since, Carlson does not command the same type of audience he did nightly while at Fox.
The booking of Trump for a segment to publish the day of the debate thus serves as Carlson’s most significant “get” since his forced exit from the cable news business.
To be certain, the first GOP debate will be a big news event with or without Trump for Fox, which remains the top-rated outlet on cable thanks to multiple pro-Trump commentators in prime time.
And despite his repeated criticisms of the network, Trump has made semi-regular appearances on Fox since Carlson was ousted, the most recent being an extensive sit down with Larry Kudlow, his former Director of the National Economic Council, who is now a host on Fox Business.
In a statement issued earlier this month, the network said it “looks forward to hosting the first debate of the Republican presidential primary season offering viewers an unmatched opportunity to learn more about the candidates’ positions on a variety of issues which is essential to the electoral process.”
Despite Trump’s public rebuke of the debate, there remain signs of an effort by the network’s leading hosts to convince Trump to change his mind and attend.
“By skipping the debates, though, Donald Trump may actually be helping Joe Biden, because he’s giving Joe Biden an excuse for not debating Donald Trump,” said Steve Doocy, a host on Fox’s popular morning program, on Monday. “That’s one of the things that [Republican National Committee chairwoman] Ronna McDaniel told the former president when she was trying to get him to do the first debate. But he said, ‘Nope, not going to do it.’”
A source familiar with the interview said the sit-down between Trump and Carlson was pre-taped and to expect it to be published Wednesday, though the exact timing remained unclear as of Monday.
The Trump/Carlson conversation could create a split-screen media moment of sorts, as the former president attempts to upstage the network he has ridiculed for months and his 2024 GOP competitors all in one fell swoop.
Still, political observers and media insiders have for weeks cautioned that Trump has proven unpredictable, and any speculation about how and where he will respond to what is said about him on the debate stage is to be taken with a grain of salt.
During an interview with The Hill last week, before reports surfaced of Trump’s plans to sit with Carlson, debate moderator and Fox anchor Martha MacCallum, said the Fox debate team is planning for several scenarios.
“It’s something that happens on a daily basis during all of our news coverage and we’re always keeping an eye on social media during these events,” MacCallum said of Trump’s frequent posts on Truth Social, some of which have criticized the network directly in recent days. “We’ll have an eye to that certainly. Whether or not anything that is in that world will make it into the actual [debate] conversation, we can’t really say at this point. But we’ll see.”
Brett Samuels contributed.
Updated: 8:47 p.m.