The Trump campaign has recently urged the Republican National Committee (RNC) to cancel the November GOP debate in Miami and refrain from scheduling any additional debates, citing the need for Republicans to focus on defeating Democrats and taking back the White House in 2024.
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Former President Donald Trump’s senior advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, said on Monday that the RNC should “refocus its manpower and money on preventing Democrats’ efforts to steal the 2024 election.”
The statement continued, “Anything less, along with other reasons not to cancel, are an admission to the grassroots that their concerns about voter integrity are not taken seriously and national Republicans are more concerned about helping Joe Biden than ensuring a safe and secure election.”
Following the second GOP debate, LaCivita told NBC News that Trump would not be attending the third debate, adding that the RNC should “immediately put an end to any further primary debates so we can train our fire on Crooked Joe Biden and quit wasting time and money that could be going to evicting Biden from the White House.”
Trump, the current GOP frontrunner in primary polls, stirred controversy when he chose not to participate in the first two debates. Instead, he released a pre-recorded interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson during the first and held a rally in Detroit on the same evening as the second.
DeSantis drew attention to Trump’s absence during last week’s debate, saying that the former president was “missing in action” and “owes it to [the voters] to defend his record” on the national debt. Trump “set the stage,” DeSantis claimed, “for the inflation that we have now.”
DeSantis spokesperson Bryan Griffin has also denounced the Trump campaign’s efforts to cancel the debates. America “needs a president who will fight for them anywhere, in any forum,” Griffin said. “But Trump knows he can’t defend his record, and he isn’t the fighter he was in 2016.”
On Monday, Trump’s trial on civil fraud began, and he appeared in court. He has been accused of fraudulently inflating the value of his assets to secure better deals and loans. The former president is also facing 91 felony counts in four criminal cases and, if convicted, could spend years in prison.