Fox News To No Longer Allow Trump Surrogates In Debate ‘Spin Room’ After Trump Refuses To Show Up

Fox News has moved to restrict former President Donald Trump’s surrogates from attending the Republican Party primary debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday after the former president announced over the weekend that he would not be showing up.

The network informed the Trump campaign on Monday that access to the debate “spin room” — where top supporters of candidates tout the person they are supporting and attack foes — was now going to be limited to “participating candidate/campaigns,” according to a Fox News memo obtained by Axios.

Other campaigns that did not qualify would also not be allowed to send their surrogates onto the network.

The 77-year-old former president declared over the weekend that the results of a CBS News GOP primary poll proved that the primary was over and that he did not need to debate, even as a notable poll in Iowa released this week showed that the race could be much closer in the key primary state.

“I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!” Trump stated on social media on Sunday evening.

The former president instead taped a pre-recorded interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that will be streamed on social media around the time of the debate.

The CBS News poll that Trump cited to justify not showing up to the debate included in its cross-tabs a question for “likely Republican primary voters” about Trump appearing at the debate.

“Do you think Donald Trump should or should not participate in the Republican debate?” the poll asked.

In response, 73% said that he “should” show up to the debate, while just 27% said that he “should not.”

“Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy suggested this week that Trump may be helping President Joe Biden by skipping the debates, arguing that by doing so he opened the door for Biden to skip debating Trump if Trump becomes the Republican Party nominee.

Doocy said, “Unfortunately, by skipping the debates, Donald Trump may actually be helping Joe Biden because he’s giving Joe Biden an excuse for not debating Donald Trump.”

“That’s one of the things that Ronna McDaniel told the former president when she was trying to get him to do the first debate,” he continued. “But he said, nope, not going to do it.”

Doocy explained that “if Donald Trump says, ‘everybody knows me, I don’t need to do it’, then Joe Biden goes, ‘everybody knows me, I’m president’.”