Trump is flirting with the idea of skipping debates. I don’t think it’d be a good idea for him to skip them all — that’d come off as arrogant and perhaps skittish, too. But this item about Nikki Haley taking a shot at DeSantis over Disney from our own Brittany Bernstein points to why it could be shrewd for him to skip the first couple: Everyone would attack DeSantis.

All the other candidates need him to be taken down a notch to try to get footing themselves, while none of them have an incentive to get on Trump’s bad side at the moment, meaning the most intense fire would probably be directed at the Florida governor on the stage rather than the former president off of it.