MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough doesn’t think Donald Trump will show up at the first Republican presidential debate because he fears one of his challengers.
Conservative columnist Matt Lewis appeared Wednesday on “Morning Joe” to argue that Trump should flaunt his indictment on Jan. 6 charges by turning himself in to Georgia authorities, which he’s required to do by the end of next week, and then head straight to the Aug. 23 debate in Milwaukee.
“If Donald Trump shows up, I think the biggest flex would be to turn himself in, you know, to surrender himself and then go to the debate,” Lewis said. “I think Donald Trump shows, look, I can walk and chew gum at the same time, and so I think if you add that in and just his compulsive need for attention, I think he shows.”
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Scarborough, however, disagreed, saying the former president would likely worry that Chris Christie would go into the debate looking to take him down.
“I do think he’s scared of Chris Christie,” Scarborough said. “He saw what Chris Christie did to Marco Rubio when Chris Christie went into a debate with one thing in mind. He knows Chris Christie put Jared Kushner’s father in jail for a very long time. He knows he’s a prosecutor who’s ruthless and knows how to push his case, and he also knows that his secret sauce in 2016 was being the disrupter, right, shaking Hillary Clinton up on the debate stage, shaking everybody else up on the debate stage. That gig is like eight years old, right? That’s Elvis in ’77 now, and I think Chris Christie’s got his number, and he knows, hey, Donald Trump has a gut instinct, his political gut instinct is second to none, like, he sees it coming.”
“I think he’s scared to death of Chris Christie and will not have the guts to go or the nerve to go on stage with Chris Christie anywhere,” Scarborough added.
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