What’s Worse Than Another Republican Debate? The Trump Town Hall Airing on Fox News at the Same Time

There is yet another Republican debate this week, the last one before Iowa voters hold their caucus on Monday, January 15. Only Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis (and Donald Trump) have qualified to participate in this round. The whole ordeal is poised to be another terrible headache.

The CNN Republican debate

The next Republican debate will take place this Wednesday, January at 9 pm ET/8 Central on CNN. The moderators will be CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, meaning we’ll still no doubt be subjected to plenty of the candidates’ vile opinions but at least we’ll likely be spared moments of aggressive bigotry from the hosts like we saw from Megyn Kelly last month.

While this is the last debate before the first caucus takes place, it is not the final debate altogether. ABC News will host one on January 18, ahead of the New Hampshire primary, and CNN will host another shortly after on January 21.

Will Trump be participating in this debate?

As mentioned, Haley, DeSantis, and Trump have all qualified for the debate under CNN’s threshold requirements, which include requiring polling at 10% in three separate national and/or Iowa polls. Haley and DeSantis have confirmed they’ll be participating but just as with every debate previous, Trump has not.

In fact, Trump already has a scheduling conflict Wednesday. Fox News has offered him the platform of a televised town hall, airing directly opposite the debate on CNN. So now you have two things to avoid watching that night.

Additionally, after Vivek Ramaswamy failed to qualify for the CNN debate, Fox News’ late-night “comedy” show host Greg Gutfeld offered him a town hall this week as well.

In a lengthy post on Twitter/X bashing CNN’s past coverage of his nonsense, Ramaswamy also announced that he’d be scheduling his own counter-programming opposite the debate. He’ll be doing a live show with far-right ghoul and alleged catnapping YouTuber Tim Pool, reminding us that of all the obnoxious, culture-war-obsessed candidates in this race, Ramaswamy manages to remain the worst, or at least the most annoying.

(featured image: Scott Halleran/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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