(RightWing.org) – Former president Donald Trump has opened a clear lead over his rivals for next year’s GOP presidential nomination — despite not having taken part in either of the debates so far. Now he’s arguing that nobody else should take part in them either. His campaign team has called on the party to cancel all the remaining scheduled primary debates.
On October 2, two of the Trump campaign’s senior advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, released a statement aimed at the Republican National Committee (RNC). In it they called for the committee to cancel the third debate, which is scheduled to take place in Miami on November 8, drop all plans for future debates, and “refocus its manpower and money on preventing Democrats’ efforts to steal the 2024 election.”
Trump himself didn’t attend the first two debates, leaving his challengers to fight among themselves. So far that strategy seems to be working for him. In January, 42.5% of likely voters wanted Trump to be next year’s GOP nominee, while 40.5% backed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and no other candidate came anywhere close. Now, after sitting out the first two debates, Trump has 55.4% of the support while DeSantis has crashed to just 13.7% — and he’s still in second place. Unless something changes dramatically, Trump looks certain to be the Republican candidate next November.
So far it also looks like he has a real chance of winning the election, too, because recent polls show Trump and Biden pretty much neck and neck.
Is he worried about history repeating itself though? While he didn’t prove in court the 2020 election was stolen from him, his team’s message to the RNC says loud and clear he thinks that could happen this time round. Scrapping the traditional candidate debates to focus on preventing election fraud would be unprecedented, but that’s what Trump wants the GOP to do.
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