In the wake of the first Republican Presidential Primary debate of the 2024 election cycle, a lot has been said about the performances of the various candidates who participated.
But of course, the overwhelming majority of the attention has been on former President Donald Trump’s decision to skip the Fox News-hosted debate, and instead, sit down with Tucker Carlson for an interview on Tucker on X.
Obviously, the former President’s interview generated more views on X than the debate generated on Fox News – that’s how the Internet works, and why traditional media is dying – leaving many to assert that Trump won the night despite his absence from the debate stage.
Nevertheless, Trump supporters are up in arms over what they view as a slight against their candidate of choice.
Despite Trump’s refusal to attend the debate, the Trump team apparently still thought they could send surrogates to the post-debate spin room to speak to the media on his behalf and shape the narrative coming out of the debate to be more favorable to him.
The campaign reportedly lined up Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and 2022 Arizona Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake to speak for Trump, but Fox News only allowed surrogates for those who actually took part in the debate to take part in the post-debate media scrum.
“Fox restricted access to the post-debate ‘spin room’ at Fiserv Forum to aides of candidates who are participating in the debate, according to a network memo obtained by Axios,” Axios reported.
Fox News did, however, allow the Trump surrogates to take part if they were guests of other media outlets.
“Trump senior aides who had indicated they’d be in the spin room — where campaigns tout their candidate and rip their foes — now will be able to enter only if they’re guests of media organizations, per the memo,” Axios added.
It’s clear that Fox News executives, like the rest of the ruling class elites in both parties, don’t want Trump to be elected President again, and they’d much prefer if he wasn’t even the GOP nominee.
But it seems like they’re going to have to try much harder if they’re going to stop Donald Trump.
Political Animal News will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
