Donald Trump’s Legal Peril May Propel Him Into the GOP Debate: “He Wants to Be Center Stage”

Over the last several months, Donald Trump has indicated that he won’t attend the first Republican debate, which will be hosted by Fox News on August 23. Trump has argued that there is no political upside given his double-digit lead over his nearest rival, Ron DeSantis. That argument has gotten stronger as DeSantis has stumbled, complete with a campaign manager shake-up this week. “I feel it’s sort of foolish to be doing [the debate],” Trump told Breitbart News as recently as August 2.

But according to two high-level Republican consultants, Trump’s calculus could be evolving, as his legal exposure has gotten worse. On August 1, in Washington, DC, Trump was indicted for a third time, on four federal charges related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. He may soon rack up a fourth indictment, this time in Georgia. Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis has been investigating Trump’s efforts to pressure local officials to flip the state’s vote totals from a Biden victory to a Trump one. Trump has publicly downplayed the severity of these indictments, but in private, he has reportedly grown increasingly angry and rattled by the mounting criminal charges.

“He wants to be center stage,” one of the consultants told Vanity Fair. Trump’s walking onstage amid existential legal peril would create the sort of high drama that thrills his voters. The debate would also put Trump, a skilled verbal brawler, in an arena where he could rhetorically batter the other candidates. “No one there will handle him well at all. Each of the candidates [are] predictable,” the second consultant said.

Multiple sources close to Trump, however, cautioned that nothing has changed about his intention to skip the debate. “I don’t think he will participate,” a senior Trump adviser said. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

In the meantime, Fox News has continued to do a full-court press to get Trump to participate. On August 1, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and network president Jay Wallace dined with Trump at his Bedminster golf club just hours after Jack Smith unsealed the 2020-election indictment. According to two sources briefed on the dinner, the Fox executives made the case that the debate is important to the GOP base. The conversation was wide-ranging, the two sources said. Sources close to Trump said that Trump told Scott and Wallace that firing Tucker Carlson was “the worst business decision in history.” Trump asked why Carlson was ousted, but Scott and Wallace wouldn’t say.

Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.

One thing all the sources I spoke to agreed on is that Trump will stoke the will-he-or-won’t-he-appear speculation for as long as he can. “He’s the sort of person who makes up his mind in the last moments,” a source close to Trump said.