The Republican National Committee has exacting standards to appear on Wednesday at the first Republican presidential debate. Less so, it seems, for former President Donald Trump’s post-debate spinners.
Trump, with a huge primary season edge over GOP rivals for the right to challenge President Joe Biden in 2024, is skipping Wednesday’s debate in Milwaukee. But Donald Trump Jr. and his fiance Kimberly Guilfoyle will be in the post-debate spin room after the main event, run by Fox News.
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Yet it’s strange they’re being allowed on the debate premises since their candidate isn’t participating and is even conducting counterprogramming through an interview at the same time as the debate with ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
The RNC is a private organization and hasn’t been shy about setting its terms for 2024 GOP presidential candidates to participate in its debates. Rules include earning donations from at least 40,000 individuals and polling evidence GOP debate hopefuls have even 1% of primary voters’ support to the point that it was until recently unclear if the most recent vice president of the United States, Mike Pence, would make the Aug. 23 debate stage. It appears he will.
The RNC could, if it so chooses, deny entry to the debate premises for the former president’s son and future daughter-in-law. If the couple wants to spin for Trump on the sidewalk outside, on public property past the security perimeter, they would be free to do so.
Yet that’s not going to happen, since the former president and 2024 GOP leader can effectively dictate the terms of party events even if he’s shunning them. It’s like an episode of the 2000s-era HBO show Entourage, in which the series protagonist, movie star Vincent Chase, sends to an A-List Hollywood party he wants to skip his schlubby sidekick Turtle to “represent.” Attendees aren’t thrilled to see the stand-in, but still wanting Vince to show up at their events in the future, they have no choice but to go along.
It all plays into the notion that the RNC has effectively rigged the nomination in Trump’s favor, or at least put a serious thumb on the political scale. If Trump doesn’t like how he’s treated by party apparatus in the primary season, or in the highly unlikely event he loses the nomination fight, he can just walk away from the political sphere and tell his legions of MAGA followers to do the same.
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That’s easily over 30% of the national electorate and almost certainly the election, and Trump has shown it can have a real effect on election outcomes. In a pair of January 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs, many Republicans, at least some deterred by Trump’s false complaints about his loss to Biden in the state, stayed home rather than cast ballots. Democrats won both seats, handing them the Senate majority for the first time in six years.
Trump was not ever likely to participate in the first RNC-sponsored debate, despite pleadings by party leaders and Fox News anchors and executives to show up. Even Trump’s fiercest detractors concede he is smart to avoid exposing himself to a den of GOP primary rivals when polls show there’s utterly no need to. But allowing his minions in the spin room to talk him up anyway gives the former president more incentive to skip future debates and still get in his side of the story.
