Speaker 1: Fox News hosts are almost begging the twice indicted, twice arrested, twice impeached,
failed former President Donald Trump to appear on the debate stage on August 23rd. Now,
I think this is mostly because of what's good for the network. If, after all this
work to secure the first presidential a Republican primary presidential debate,
Fox News does the debate and Trump doesn't show Trump's the biggest draw. It's bad for
their ratings. It's just not going to attract as much attention and. It's a profit making event at
the end of the day. So this is a great little compilation from this morning. This is from
decoding Fox News. Decoding fox News. Put this together. Here are the fox and friends. Host this
is yesterday morning. Actually, i apologize, making the case that trump should really be
there. They're almost begging the guy to show up. Speaker 3: Rewards outweigh the risks, i believe.
I think this is his wheelhouse, the debates, his wheelhouse. I think he risk letting someone else
gain momentum. I heard earlier a guest on fox and friends first who made a great point, who said
don't take the voter for granted. The voters want to hear from him. So why wouldn't he, especially
because he's such a good debater? I understand. Speaker 2: Too, that for Donald Trump to be there,
if he's think he's going to get the nomination, the best thing to do is to go into training.
The best thing you have advantage over a current president. They don't debate. And remember how bad
Obama did in his first one in George Bush, 43 in his first one going for reelection because you're
not used to the debate he used to governing. And if he could keep himself sure, going into the
maybe two or three that he has with Joe Biden, it would only help him. So I would take the reps as
much as possible. If he doesn't show up, then you are going to hear a constant you know, people are
going to say, what was he afraid of? Why didn't he show up to sit in the lead? But we're trying
to figure out who exactly should be the next president. Yeah, I think those points that you
just made on behalf of Donald Trump, it would be great to see Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and
Chris Christie just duke it out. It would. Speaker 1: Be great for the ratings,
certainly, I think is what he. Speaker 2: Means. That's why
they call it a debate. And then, you know, so many people have said, well,
Donald Trump is an angel. You recorded a while ago. He's done so well in debates in the past.
All right. Show up, debate and shine. Speaker 1: There you go. There you go.
Just show up and do it. They really want him there. And in fact, I would argue they
really need him there because let's be honest, Trump is the guy who has more than half of the
support. Trump's got 55% of the Republican electorate support right now. The other,
however, many candidates are sharing the other 45%. And there's a lot of I don't know, let's
in there. Here's one more clip also put together by decoding Fox News. They are just desperate.
Speaker 2: Surprisingly has got a lot of small donors for a Republican is Chris Christie.
He raised $1.6 million in the last quarter and a third of that came from small donors,
which does suggest that he's got broad appeal. You know, he's been on all the
channels and he's obviously resonating. Speaker 3: To be able to debate.
Speaker 2: Oh, he is in Chris season. He is he's got plenty of unique donors and he has been,
Brian, to your point, has been essentially shaming the former president who says, look,
I'm way ahead in the polls so I don't have to do it. At least that's what he said yesterday
with Maria. Of course, this morning. We're wondering, will you show up or won't you show up?
Speaker 1: All right. So listen, Trump, it is true that Fox News, his primary concern is ratings. It
is also true that it's not a very serious debate if the leader isn't there. And so I understand
that Trump may accurately have assessed that it can only be bad for him If it goes well,
he's already winning. How much? You know, he already has enough support to be the nominee.
If it goes poorly, it might really hurt him and maybe he wants to kind of stick it to
Fox News because as he sees it, they haven't been treating him well lately. I hope he shows
up. I hope he shows up because that's really the appropriate thing to do. I don't know if you will.