Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump taunted CNN during a rally Monday in Georgia, complaining about what he deemed unfair coverage and threatening to skip an upcoming debate to be hosted by the news network unless CNN donated money to charity.
“How about I tell CNN that I’m not going to do the next debate?” Trump asked the crowd in Georgia, adding that he would ask the network to donate $5 million to wounded soldiers or other veterans to get him to appear.
But the real estate tycoon then said his critics would accuse him to be “chicken” if he skipped the Republican debate, scheduled for Dec. 15 in Las Vegas.
“So should I tell CNN that I’m not doing the debate because they treat me really unfairly?” he said. “If I do it, I have a feeling I could face repercussions in the polls.”
Trump took issue with CNN’s coverage of a meeting he held earlier on Monday in New York City with black pastors.
Trump, who led a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll of Republican candidates with 31 percent of support, has not hesitated to throw his weight around in relation to the debates.
He previously needled CNN to donate proceeds from advertising during a Republican debate to charity. He and another Republican candidate, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, also threatened in October to skip a debate unless changes were made to its format.
Attempts to hurt Trump’s 2016 run are “not going to work,” according to former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain who spoke out for “outsiders” seeking the White House.
“If you were born in the United States of America, you are an insider through and through,” Cain, who ran for president in 2012, said before Trump took the stage in Macon, Georgia.
The former business executive had tough words earlier in the day for one establishment Republican hopeful, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Bush had referred to Cain’s time atop the polls ahead of the 2012 Republican primaries, before Cain dropped out of the race, in an attempt to reassure supporters that non-politicians like Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson would not continue leading opinion polls next year, according to media reports.
Cain fired back in a post on his website on Monday, calling Bush “Mr. 5.5 percent,” hinting at Bush’s weak support in recent polls of the Republican field.
“If you want to say I had a ‘fall,’ go ahead, I guess,” Cain said in the post. “You can’t fall when you’ve never gotten any higher than the floor in the first place, and that’s the state of the Jeb Bush campaign.”©2015 Thomson Reuters. All Rights Reserved.
