Donald Trump may *never* debate again

And he may never need to.

(Donald Trump)\

Donald Trump issued an ultimatum of sorts on Tuesday.

Trump isn’t definitively saying he won’t take part in the planned Republican debates — the first is set for August — but he’s coming pretty damn close.

Now, it’s Trump we’re talking about here. So assuming anything he says will actually come to pass is a bit of a dodgy proposition.

But, I do think that Trump views the coming debates with real skepticism and is weighing whether or not participating makes sense for him.

After all, he’s already skipped a Republican presidential debate — just days before the 2016 Iowa caucuses.

Then like now, Trump took issue with not having total control over the debate structure and format. Most notably, he wanted Fox News personality Megyn Kelly, with whom he had earlier clashed, removed as a moderator. Fox refused.

So Trump took his ball and went home.¹

And, his logic then sounds a lot like his logic now.

"Let's see how much money Fox is going to make on the debate without me, okay?" Trump said at a press conference announcing the move.

“Fox will go from probably having 24 million viewers to about 2 million,” echoed then Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

The point was obvious: Trump was the star of the show. Fox needed him more than he needed Fox. And, therefore, if they wouldn’t play by his rules, he would walk away.

While that was mostly true back then — Trump was the frontrunner but hadn’t won anything just yet, and would go on to lose the Iowa caucuses — it’s TOTALLY true now.

Trump is not only the former president of the United States but also the very clear frontrunner for the 2024 nomination. He has dominated the Republican party for the last 8 years. He is the prime mover; he acts and everyone else reacts.

A debate sans Trump then will not feel much like a debate at all. While the networks broadcasting it will undoubtedly try to spin it as a chance for the Trump alternatives to make their mark, it’s like going to a Lakers game and seeing that LeBron James won’t be playing. The game might still be good but man oh man has it lost some of its luster.

Trump, of course, knows this. He is uniquely attuned to the fact that a) cable networks are obsessed with ratings and b) like him or hate him, he rates.

Trump, for example, noted on his Truth Social site on Tuesday that his interview Sunday with conservative talk radio host Mark Levin was the top rated show of the day.

From Trump’s point of view, he has all the power in this relationship. Which means that he should get to dictate the terms of the debates — moderators, participants, sponsors. And, if he doesn’t get to, well then he doesn’t really need these debates for any meaningful reason.

Which — as much as I hate to admit as a BIG fan of debates — he just might be right about.

Trump, you could argue, needed the primary debates in 2016 as a sort of validator. Voters knew he could give a speech and send a tweet but they had never seen him standing on a stage going to to toe with his rivals. And they wanted to see that because they knew he would need to debate the eventual Democratic nominee in the general election. It was a proof of concept moment for him.

There’s no such bar that Trump needs to meet this time around. He’s already been there and done that. Nothing that he could say in a debate context could or would change how Republican (or general election) voters view him.

And, given Trump’s status as the clear frontrunner for the nomination, he would very likely be the focal point of all the other candidates — absorbing attacks from all angles.

While it t’s very hard for me to see how anything that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley saying that would change perceptions about Trump,² Trump still doesn't like to be attacked — and certainly not in a setting where his presence is entirely voluntary.

Remember that Trump views EVERYTHING transactionally. Is this a net good for him or a net bad? What can he gain from it versus what will it cost him?

Seen through that lens, it’s hard to justify why Trump should participate in the primary debates.

And, if he doesn’t take part in the primary debates, it’s hard to see him being in the two general election debates either. The Republican National Committee has already removed itself from the Commission on Presidential Debates — the organization that runs the general election debates — alleging bias.

“Today, the RNC voted to withdraw from the biased CPD, and we are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people,” said RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel at the time.

Of course, the RNC could come back into the fold but it’s hard to see how. Which means that a possibility at least exists that we have seen the last of Donald Trump on the debate stage.

That is a bad thing for democracy. The public is best served when they get to see candidates for office pushed and prodded -- forced to think on their feet on the issues of the day. That’s especially true for Trump whose erratic behavior and unpredictable policy decisions shaped and defined his first term in office.

1. Well, not home exactly. He wound up holding a competing rally in Iowa on the night of the debate.

2. His claim that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose a single vote is more true now than when he said it all those years ago.