Fox News announced it will host a town hall with President Trump in Des Moines, Iowa, on January 10th, running simultaneously with the CNN GOP primary debate.

The town hall, set to air from 9 to 10 p.m. ET, will be co-moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.

The town hall will take place days before the January 15th Iowa Caucus.

With the town hall announcement, the CNN event will likely only include Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.

“With only three candidates qualifying, it’s time for Donald Trump to show up. As the debate stage continues to shrink, it’s getting harder for Donald Trump to hide,” Nikki Haley said.

Deadline reports:

To qualify for the CNN debate candidates “must receive at least 10% in three separate national and/or Iowa polls of Republican caucusgoers or primary voters” that meet the news outlet’s standards for reporting., according to the network. One of the polls must be an “approved CNN poll of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers.”

That criteria likely means that former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy, who have participated in all four previous debates, won’t make it to this one. Ramaswamy blasted CNN in a X/Twitter post on Tuesday, and said that he would be doing a live audience show with Tim Pool that evening.

Baier and MacCallum moderated this cycle’s first GOP debate, held in August and hosted by Fox News. The other debates were hosted by Fox Business, NBC News and NewsNation. CNN scheduled its debate in anticipation of the Republican National Committee lifting its requirement that candidates only participate in debates sanctioned by the party.

Vivek Ramaswamy wrote:

Forget @CNN’s fake Iowa “debate” on Jan 10 which will be the most boring in modern history. We’re doing a live-audience show that night in Des Moines with @Timcast instead. Won’t hold back. Here’s the backstory on CNN’s shenanigans:

– On Dec 13, CNN disgracefully cut short its own Iowa town hall with me after I correctly pointed out uncomfortable truths about Jan 6, which CNN instantly dismissed as “conspiracy theories.”

– On Dec 14, CNN then threatened my campaign on the phone with a cease-and-desist & had YouTube black out the town hall after it got 200k+ views on YouTube in a matter of hours. Yet Nikki Haley’s CNN town hall was still up after 6 months (68k total views, sad).

– Later on Dec 14, CNN notified my campaign that multiple qualifying polls, which the RNC used for each of the RNC Debates, mysteriously wouldn’t count for CNN’s fake “debate” in Iowa on January 10.

– CNN Senior Media “Reporter” Oliver Darcy wrote a newsletter that castigated his own network for “allowing [me] to infect the public with his conspiracy campaign.

– CNN Commentator Van Jones said he was “literally shaking” when he heard me speak. And my rhetoric is “one step away from Nazi propaganda.”

-CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper said I delivered a “soliloquy of conspiracy theories.”

-CNN Anchor Pamela Brown and “Chief Investigative Correspondent” said Vivek has a “history of peddling disinformation.”

-CNN Anchor Kaitlan Collins said I use a “reasonable tone” to sell sinister lies to people “who aren’t paying close attention” and might think what he is saying “maybe is legitimate.”

-CNN’s token “conservative” Commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin said my rhetoric is “damaging to the country.”

“CNN is an embarrassment. Out with corrupt old media,” Ramaswamy added.

Per Breitbart:

The Ramaswamy campaign highlights multiple gripes it has with “ratings wasteland” CNN, including a cease and desist threat the campaign said it received from the network for posting Ramaswamy’s CNN town hall to his campaign YouTube account.

The campaign also contends the network is “cherry-picking” polls in picking which GOP candidates met polling criteria for the January 10 debate.

After his December 13 CNN town hall in Iowa, which the campaign argues was “disgracefully cut short” by the network, Ramaswamy’s team posted the video to his YouTube page. By December 14, the campaign says the network threatened it with a potential cease and desist demanding it take the video down after it reached 200,000 views. Meanwhile, a CNN town hall posted to rival Nikki Haley’s campaign, which has 68,000 views, can still be watched on her page as of this writing.

The campaign also accused the network of “cherry-picking” polls that met its requirements for the debate.

 

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