Donald Trump made the right decision to drop out of Thursday’s GOP presidential debate because Fox News "taunted" and "disrespected" him, veteran conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan tells
Newsmax TV.
"He's got a perfect right to drop out. They taunted him, they baited him, they disrespected him in that mock news release," Buchanan said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"And he simply decided, 'Look, if that's the way you're going to treat me, go right ahead and have your debate. I'm not attending.’ I think he's made the right decision from his standpoint and I hope he stands by it."
Watch Newsmax TV on
DirecTV Ch. 349, DISH Ch. 223 and
Verizon FiOS Ch. 115. Get Newsmax TV on your cable system —
Click Here Now
For days, Trump had threatened to boycott the debate unless Fox replaced moderator Megyn Kelly, whom the billionaire developer has warred with since she asked about his alleged sexism in the first GOP debate last year.
But on Tuesday, Fox — as if waving a red flag in front of a bull — taunted Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, by issuing a fake press release to media watchdog
Mediaite.com:
"We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president — a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings."
That was the last straw for Trump, who made his withdrawal from the debate official.
Buchanan, a two-time Republican presidential candidate and adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, said he doesn’t believe Trump is being inconsistent by appearing on Fox News’ "The O’Reilly Factor" on Wednesday night, 24 hours before the debate he’ll skip.
"What he's saying is an institutional problem with the Fox News organization because of the matter in which they treat him with press releases and taunts, etc. and the people they put on as moderators who are hostile to him, but he's not hostile to everybody at Fox," Buchanan said.
"I'm sure he's not hostile to [Fox host] Sean Hannity or O'Reilly. He's been on their shows many times. I don't find any inconsistency there…. [It’s the] Beltway right that's a bit of a problem here.
"They’ve got National Review, The Weekly Standard commentary, now Fox News, and all conservative columnists inside the Beltway … [and] a lot of them are beating up on Trump consistently. Which they've got every right to do. But they’d better realize that Donald Trump is walking off with Middle America."
Buchanan also advised Fox to steer clear of placing an empty chair where Trump would have sat during Thursday’s debate.
"If Fox News puts an empty podium up there, it would be a deliberately hostile act to Donald Trump. Deliberately. Did they put an empty podium up there when Ronald Reagan declined to perform in the debate before the Iowa caucuses in 1980?" Buchanan said.
"That would be a political decision on the part of Fox News to get back at Trump as an organization and to trash him. It would be condemned and I would hope Donald Trump would condemn it."
Buchanan also advised the Republican National Committee to be kinder to Trump, who now appears to be headed for big wins in the upcoming Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
"They'd better stop disrespecting somebody who has a pretty good chance of being their nominee. There's a lot of rice bowls up there at the RNC that can be broken real fast," he told Malzberg.