Will Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis Ever Meet on the Debate Stage?

As Ron DeSantis kicked off his presidential campaign last week, Donald Trump was asked during a golf tournament about meeting the Florida governor on the debate stage. “They say he’s not a very good debater, but maybe he is,” Trump said of his acolyte turned adversary. “We’ll find out. Maybe we’ll find out. Because unless he gets close, why would anybody debate?”

The question posed by Trump only adds to the uncertainty around the Republican primary debates, which are supposed to begin this summer. The Republican National Committee announced in April that the first debate would take place in August in Milwaukee, hosted by Fox News, along with Rumble, the conservative streaming platform, and the Young America’s Foundation as partners. But the RNC has yet to publicly announce a specific date or venue, nor the criteria for candidates to qualify for them. (Fox News declined to provide any details beyond pointing to the RNC’s prior comments.) Even less information is known about the second debate, other than that it will take place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Southern California. 

“It strikes me that they’re way behind schedule on everything,” said one media executive involved in discussions with the RNC. “I sort of expected by now that we would at least know the date of the first debate, and at least something of a schedule for the rest of the fall.”

Though the RNC has yet to put out the criteria for candidates hoping to debate, chair Ronna McDaniel has been in frequent communication with candidates and campaigns about the process, according to a source familiar with discussions. Still, by this time in 2015, the last presidential cycle with a wide open Republican primary, the date and venue for the first debate had already been reported, and the GOP, after streamlining the debate schedule, was wrestling with how to fit the robust 2016 field onstage. 

Behind the scenes, networks have been pitching the RNC to host debates, with Axios reporting Friday that CNN chief Chris Licht told the RNC “that CNN would air the debate not just on its linear feed, but also potentially on the linear networks of other Warner Bros. Discovery channels.” In addition, the outlet noted that “Licht also has offered to partner with a conservative-leaning outlet on the debates,” which could “include giving a journalist from the partner outlet a co-moderator spot.” Meanwhile, NBC News is making its pitch with Lester Holt as moderator alongside colleagues from CNBC and Telemundo. According to Axios, DeSantis’s team has pushed back against the RNC about CNN or NBC hosting debates. 

Low-polling candidates—like Asa Hutchinson, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Vivek Ramaswamy—would presumably jump at the chance to enter a nationally televised debate—and DeSantis, running well behind Trump in the polls, could surely benefit. Asked whether DeSantis plans to participate in the primary debates, a spokesperson for the campaign referred Vanity Fair to a quote he recently gave Ben Shapiro, in which he said, “Debates are an important part of the process” and that he “look[s] forward to participating in them.” (Still, DeSantis also recently told Glenn Beck that “corporate media…shouldn’t be involved in our process because they’re hostile to us as Republicans.”) 

By the time of the first debate, there could be several more declared candidates, like Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Chris Sununu. The show will likely go on even if Trump skips it. “If we get announced as a sponsor of a debate, we’ll have that debate whether or not candidates decide to show up,” said the media executive involved in discussions.

Trump is likely to opt out of “at least one of the first two debates of the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest,” The New York Times reported last month. The former president, per the Times, “has made it clear that he does not want to breathe life into his Republican challengers by sharing the stage with them.” Trump, who opted out of a primary campaign debate in 2016, suggested as much during a talk radio appearance in April, claiming, “People don’t debate when they have these massive leads” in polling. He has privately complained, per multiple outlets, that the first debate is too early, and publicly grumbled about the setting of the second, the Reagan Library, where Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan is the longtime chairman of the board.