Fox Host Says Trump Would Never Back Down From A Debate, But He Has Repeatedly

Fox’s Eric Bolling: “You Want To Be President Of The United States? ... Donald Trump Wouldn't Back Down From A Debate"

Written by Andrew Lawrence

Published

Fox News co-hosts argued that unlike presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton “would never” agree to a debate on Fox, forgetting that Trump has repeatedly backed out of debates during the GOP primaries -- including a debate on Fox News.

During a discussion on the possibility of conducting a Democratic debate hosted by Fox News on the May 18 edition of Fox’s The Five, co-host Eric Bolling, argued that someone who wants to be president of the United States would not back down from a debate on Fox News, adding, “Donald Trump wouldn’t back down from a debate like this”:

But Donald Trump did back down from a Fox News debate in January, citing unfair questions from moderator Megyn Kelly and a “wise-guy press release” from Fox News:

Trump long has objected to the participation of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly as one of the three moderators, claiming she has treated him unfairly with both her questioning of him at last August’s debate and her commentary since then.

Trump also said that a “wise-guy press release” that the network issued earlier on Tuesday belittling him was inappropriately antagonistic and childish.

Trump has also threatened to pull out of a CNN debate citing “one-sided and unfair reporting” from the network. Furthermore, a NBC debate was cancelled in March, after Trump said he would not attend because “I think we’ve had enough debates,” and following critical editorials of Trump, ABC News dropped The New Hampshire Union Leader as a co-sponsor from a February Republican debate, which Trump took credit for.

Additionally, The Five co-host Meghan McCain claimed that Clinton wouldn’t agree to a debate on Fox because she is scared to take questions from Fox host Bret Baier, claiming “she knows that Bret Baier ain’t Rachel Maddow, honey. She’s going to have to answer some real questions and a lot of times she gets a lot of passes from the media.”

But Hillary Clinton did take questions from Bret Baier during a Fox News presidential town hall event in March in which Baier asked Clinton eight separate questions about her private email server.