Earlier Tuesday Donald Trump said he "probably" would appear on the FOX News Republican presidential debate stage Thursday night. But later in the day -- at a Marshalltown, Iowa press conference and rally televised live on CNN -- he said no dice, he won't attend.
Protesting "wise guy" comments from the network about his criticism of anchor Megyn Kelly, Trump said he would give event money to wounded warriors and hope FOX loses sponsors because of his failure to show.
In fact, asked later if the GOP front-runner might reconsider, his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said no, Trump "definitely" will skip the event.
Trump had threatened a debate boycott for days, describing Kelly as a "lightweight" who is biased against him.
“Nothing’s 100 percent, I’m not 100 percent,” Trump told CNN in a Monday interview. “I’ll see. If I think I’m going to be treated unfairly, I’d do something else. I don’t think she can treat me fairly, I think she’s very biased. But that doesn’t mean I don’t do the debate. I like doing debates.”
His criticism led to pushback from Fox News, including one statement from the network earlier Tuesday that drew the businessman's ire: “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president -- a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”
Citing that statement, Trump accused Fox of "playing games" and that he will do an event for wounded warriors instead of Thursday's debate. "I was already to do the debate regardless," he told Tuesday's Marshalltown audience. "But that childishness put me over the top."
Trump reportedly is trying to line up an alternative, competing event in Iowa with another network and a format, at the same hour, involving just himself and Iowans. No details were available at this writing.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
