Many people who watch politics closely, journalists and commentators, are anticipating Donald Trump to come in like a wrecking ball at the first Republican presidential primary debate on Thursday, hurling personal invective at the other candidates.
Fox News’s Chris Wallace, one of the debate moderators, has plans to at least hand Trump the opportunity to do so.
Wallace, along with Fox anchors Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, are set to co-moderate the debate. And even though Trump has said he’ll be “very nice and highly respectful” during the debates, Wallace said in a recent interview that he and his colleagues will set him up to do some damage.
“Trump, you know he wants to go after people,” Wallace told the Washington Post in an interview published late Monday. “And you can be sure there will be a moment — whether it’s in my questioning or Bret’s or Megyn’s, where somebody is going to give him a fat juicy ball right in there so he can go after [Jeb] Bush and see how he responds to it. It’s sort of like playing three-dimensional checkers.”
Bush and Trump are both the two leading contenders in several national polls, though Trump is leading Bush by a wide margin in some of them. Per reports on the format of the debate, the two of them will be positioned at the center of the debate stage.
In the last several months, Trump has said on multiple occasions, “The last thing we need is another Bush,” referring to Bush’s father and older brother.
For his part, Bush has declined to comment at much length on Trump. In an interview with Fox News in early July, Bush said of Trump, “I don’t know if he’s having success. We’ll see in the long haul.”
