Donald Trump’s campaign said that Fox News’s C.E.O., Roger Ailes, can’t “toy” with him, and so he’s not going to the network’s debate in Des Moines on Thursday night. The Republican debates had already become strange playthings, with giant planes on the stage, and grown men having tantrums about how much attention they were getting. They argued about how they would scare people in other countries and beat them up, and the less popular candidates attacked one another and hoped that no one would notice that they weren’t going after the bully. There was a debate in which they were asked about putting a woman’s picture on American currency, and they started talking about their moms and cool foreign ladies. It was getting pathetic. The sitcom—or tragicom—needed a bright new character. Fox News seems to have thought that Megyn Kelly, its intelligent host, might do the trick. But Donald Trump doesn’t want to play with her anymore.
He had done so, plenty, after she asked him a pointed question in an earlier debate about his attitudes toward women. That led to Trumpian Twitter attacks and his description of blood from “her wherever.” It also encouraged the idea that Kelly might be the voice of a more sensible wing of the right, but it’s not clear that there is any such thing, or not in any coherent form. And, anyway, that’s not how Fox News was using her. Instead, it was playing up the gladiatorial aspect: Can Trump take on the smart blonde? Their interaction would indeed have been a side show in the debate—an illuminating one, perhaps, or maybe just a very special episode in this series of Republican dysfunction. After Trump’s complaints about whether Kelly could be fair to him.
Donald Trump’s Angry, Perfectly Timed Debate Exit - The New Yorker
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