Donald Trump Campaign on Skipping Debate: ‘He Knows a Bad Deal When He Sees One’

The campaign of Donald Trump issued a statement on Tuesday, reiterating that he will skip the Fox News debate on Thursday because he “knows a bad deal when he sees one.”

Instead, Trump will host an event in Iowa to raise money for veterans organizations, the campaign said.

“As someone who wrote one of the best-selling business books of all time, ‘The Art of the Deal,’ who has built an incredible company, including some of the most valuable and iconic assets in the world, and as someone who has a personal net worth of many billions of dollars, Mr. Trump knows a bad deal when he sees one,” the campaign said in a statement. “Fox News is making tens of millions of dollars on debates, and setting ratings records (the highest in history), where as in previous years they were low-rated afterthoughts.”

Trump had threatened to back out in recent days, objecting to Megyn Kelly’s role as a co-moderator. On Tuesday, he even asked his Twitter followers whether he should participate. Even though a majority said he should, his campaign indicated later in the day that he would back out. That was after Fox News issued a statement making light of his concerns that Kelly would treat him unfairly.

“Unlike the very stupid, highly incompetent people running our country into the ground, Mr. Trump knows when to walk away. Roger Ailes and Fox News think they can toy with him, but Mr. Trump doesn’t play games,” the Trump campaign said. “There have already been six debates, and according to all online debate polls including Drudge, Slate, Time Magazine, and many others, Mr. Trump has won all of them, in particular the last one. Whereas he has always been a job creator and not a debater, he nevertheless truly enjoys the debating process – and it has been very good for him, both in polls and popularity.”

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