Trump Campaign: End Primary Debates to Stop the Election from Being Stolen
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Photo by Gage Skidmore
Tuesday, the Trump campaign issued a statement from senior advisors, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, calling for the Republican National Committee to “end all future debates in order to refocus its manpower and money on preventing Democrats efforts to steal the 2024 election.”
The campaign claims, “Anything less, along with other reasons not to cancel, are an admission to the grassroots that their concern about voter integrity are not taken seriously and national Republicans are more concerned about helping Joe Biden than ensuring a safe and secure election.”
It’s important to note the Trump campaign already raised $250M after the 2020 election in the name of election integrity, yet funds went into the president’s political actions committees and the RNC, rather than the “Official Election Defense Fund,” which did not exist.
The former president has also made calls to end the debates on Truth Social. “What is the RNC doing? They should be fighting against Election Interference & the Pennsylvania Voter Registration Scam. The Debates should be ENDED, BAD for the Republican Party!”
Back in March, Trump allies such as Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, railed against the Democratic National Committee for not facilitating debates after Robert Kennedy Jr. polled at 19%. There’s a stronger case for the DNC to protect their incumbent president (which may be their undoing, since Biden is extremely unpopular). Trump may be far up in the polls and a former president, but he is still competing for an open GOP slot like everyone else.
Kirk also criticized Ron DeSantis’ campaign back in August and suggested he should stop spending his money on a primary and help Trump win in a general election. “Instead, you might as well just burn that money. Donald Trump will be the nominee absent an unforeseen black swan event. We need that money as a movement right now, and you’re lighting it on fire. Lighting it on fire. This is why the Democrats are so confident. They’re so cocky. Indict Trump, weigh him down. Make the Republicans fight amongst themselves. Burn the money. Do the boring stuff in Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, and squeak out a win. And meanwhile, we’re worried about a vanity project. It’s got to change very soon.”
But if Trump is so inevitable, it begs the question of why Trump was spending so much money and effort attacking DeSantis rather than keeping his focus on Biden. Trump has spent more money attacking DeSantis than he did helping Republicans during the 2022 midterms, despite handpicking and endorsing many of the candidates himself. Back in August, it was reported that “a quarter of all independent expenditures in the 2024 election cycle, $20.2 million, has targeted Ron DeSantis.” That was more than double the amount of money attacking Trump, the frontrunner, or President Joe Biden.
Much of Trump’s fundraising is not going to building ground game or fighting election integrity—it’s going toward his legal bills. So, even if DeSantis dropped out of the race, there’s no guarantee his donors would suddenly give to Trump’s legal matters.
There is also not a clear strategy from the campaign to assure voters that if the election was snatched from them in 2023, it won’t happen again. If you accept the premise the Democrats stole the election in 2020 while Trump was the president, how is he going to stop it now that he’s out of power with his attention pulled into multiple trials that will dominate the headlines?
Demanding an end to the primaries before a single ballot is cast, in order to save future elections, is nonsensical. Primaries are a part of our democratic process. If the confident Trump campaign wants to lay the groundwork for an effective general election strategy and protect their win, there’s nothing stopping them from focusing their energy and manpower there now. But to ask the RNC to pull the rug out from under Trump’s challengers and simply end debates would be worse than how the DNC treated Bernie Sanders on behalf of Hillary Clinton back in 2016.
