Just 30 minutes before the first 2024 GOP debate, a Fox News panel addressed the elephant in the room of former President Donald Trump not attending the debate. Fox host Bill Hemmer quickly pivoted after one veteran political analyst on the panel brought up ex-host Tucker Carlson's interview with the GOP candidate.

"What about Trump not being here tonight? How do they deal with that?" Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum asked a pre-debate panel about how the candidates might handle the former president's absence Wednesday night.

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"I guess the pretaped interview with Tucker Carlson for presentation on Twitter — I am interested to see how that will go and whether any news is made out of that," Fox political analyst Brit Hume said dismissively.

He explained the historical context of skipping presidential debates.

"It is risky to skip a debate. We saw what happened to Ronald Reagan when he skipped the Iowa debate in 1980. He lost the state and propelled George H.W. Bush to the lead for a time. Ronald Reagan eventually overtook him and won the nomination," Hume said. "I don’t think George H.W. Bush would have been president if he hadn’t won Iowa in 1980. He wouldn’t have gotten the vice presidential nomination. He had a foothold in the race and stayed in and ended up being president of the United States."

Hume added, "It can be consequential skipping debates."

Hemmer pivoted away from the discussion of Trump not attending the debate that the channel was hosting Wednesday night.

"We haven’t spoken about Chris Christie yet. How do you view his strategy tonight?" Hemmer said to the panel.

Trump took notice of the conversation and blasted Hume's comments on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“I AM LEADING BIDEN IN ALMOST ALL POLLS! LEADING REPUBLICANS BY 50 POINTS. FOX NEWS REFUSES TO POST OR DISCUSS. BRIT HUME, WORKING WITH RINO BRET BAIER, IS DELUSIONAL!!!” Trump wrote.

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Trump's conversation with Carlson dropped on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, just before the RNC debate began.

The pretaped interview notched nearly 11 million views within five minutes of its posting.