Fox News will host a town hall with former President Donald Trump on Jan. 10, counterprogramming CNN’s Iowa Republican debate that same night.
Trump, the Republican Party front-runner, has so far skipped all debates, so it’s no surprise that he won’t be attending the CNN event. Given that criteria, the CNN debate at Drake University will likely feature his two main rivals, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The Fox News Town Hall, which begins concurrently with the CNN event at 9:00 PM ET, will also be held in Des Moines. Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum will co-host the event, the first time they have sat down with Trump since May 2020. Baier also interviewed Trump in June. Hannity will be confiscated that evening.
To qualify for the CNN debate, candidates must score “at least 10% in three separate statewide and/or Iowa polls among Republican caucuses or primary voters” that meet the news network’s reporting standards, the network said. One of the polls must be a “CNN-approved poll of likely Republican caucuses in Iowa.”
Those criteria likely mean that former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy, who have attended four previous debates, will not make it to this one. Ramaswamy criticized CNN in an X/Twitter post on Tuesday, saying he would do a live audience show with Tim Pool that evening.
Baier and MacCallum moderated the first GOP debate of this cycle, which took place in August and was hosted by Fox News. The remaining debates were moderated by Fox Business, NBC News and NewsNation. CNN scheduled its debate in anticipation of the Republican National Committee lifting its requirement that candidates participate only in party-sanctioned debates.
Source: Deadline
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