A Fox News Debate That Skimped on ‘the Elephant Not in the Room’

Still, Mr. Trump’s determination to look in a web based video, as a substitute of a nationally televised debate, mirrored the altering function of cable news in presidential campaigns, the place mass media has yielded a few of its gatekeeper powers to extra area of interest shops aimed toward die-hard followers, not swing voters.

Eight years in the past, Fox News drew a document 24 million viewers for the primary debate of the 2016 Republican main. Americans tuned in to gawk at Mr. Trump, then a novelty, who dominated the night with tasteless assaults on Rosie O’Donnell and a fiery conflict with the moderator Megyn Kelly, who tried to carry Mr. Trump to account for his misogynistic habits.

At the time, Mr. Trump’s name-calling and aggressive presence have been an anomaly within the comparatively civil enviornment of presidential debates. On Wednesday, his legacy could possibly be seen within the broadsides of candidates like Mr. Christie, who in contrast Mr. Ramaswamy to a human model of ChatGPT. (The solely audible expletive got here from an off-color lyric in “Rich Men North of Richmond,” the favored nation track and conservative anthem that Fox News performed forward of the evening’s first query.)

Privately, Fox News administration downplayed Mr. Trump’s absence on Wednesday evening, though the community’s chief government, Suzanne Scott, visited Mr. Trump at his New Jersey membership this month to attempt to persuade him to look. On Wednesday, the Fox moderators earned some reward for asking a string of substantive questions on topics starting from abortion rights to local weather change to former Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to go together with Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election outcomes.

This was not the primary time that Mr. Trump had snubbed a significant Fox occasion. In January 2016, on the eve of the essential Iowa caucuses, Mr. Trump pulled out of a community debate as a result of Ms. Kelly was set to be one of many moderators. “Let’s see how much money Fox is going to make on the debate without me,” he taunted on the time.

Mr. Trump went on to narrowly lose the caucuses. He confirmed up for Fox’s subsequent main debate in March, and after he gained the nomination, the community’s prime-time commentators embraced him, proving that media stars and star politicians share at the least one key attribute: adaptability.