Former President Donald Trump has threatened to blow off Republican primary debates for the 2024 election, a move that could theoretically crash the viewership of the debates and effectively deny a meaningful platform to candidates who want to challenge him, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.
But it didn't have to be this way, argued MSNBC's Ja'han Jones on Monday — and the Republican Party's own decisions allowed it to happen, chiefly by allowing Trump to skip several debates in 2016 without any real consequences.
"These moments didn’t just set Trump apart from his Republican peers in a showy way, much to his liking. They also set a precedent for Trump to spurn future debates while appearing rebellious to his followers, rather than merely incompetent. And conservative media played into the tactic by covering Trump’s counterprogramming events anyway, dampening any negative impact his absences could have caused," wrote Jones. "Republicans have largely fed this strategy — and Trump’s hypersensitivity to criticism — even more in recent years. This was the case when many of them supported Trump’s decision to skip a virtual debate with Joe Biden in 2020, and when the Republican National Committee voted last year to bar its party’s presidential nominees from participating in general election debates sanctioned by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates."
Flash forward to today, wrote Jones, and "the chickens have come home to roost" for the Republican Party. And GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has no effective response — she only said that it's "his choice," when asked, which, Jones continued, makes her look "powerless."
"Trump is still claiming he won the 2020 election, which he legitimately lost by millions of votes. He clearly doesn’t care what 'the people' want," concluded Jones. "That said, he appears to be right about one thing: Given his overwhelming support among conservatives in recent polls, it begs the question about whether participating in primary debates serves him any good. For years, Republicans have portrayed Trump as a figure who is larger than life. They can’t be surprised he now thinks he’s bigger than the party and its electoral processes."
Recent polling has indicated Republican lawmakers around the country have pushed new legislation targeting the LGBTQ community, including laws making it illegal to even mention gender identity or sexual orientation in schools, citizen-led book bans, and crackdowns on child-friendly drag storytime events.
