Republican debate cancelled, Nikki Haley bluntly says she will take part only if Trump…

Nikki Haley said she won’t participate in the next Republican presidential debate unless former President Donald Trump attends, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis the only candidate to commit to Thursday’s event. Haley said in a statement issued during the campaign in New Hampshire that we have had five big debates in this campaign. Unfortunately Donald Trump has confounded them all. He has no place left to hide. The next debate I will have will be either with Donald Trump or Joe Biden. I look forward to it.

His statement was released a day after the all-important Iowa caucuses, in which Trump won by wide margins over both Haley and DeSantis. With the two facing a fierce race for second place in Iowa, Haley tried to make her election argument more about Trump than DeSantis, repeatedly reiterating that her candidacy ” Signals a shift from the “chaos” that is behind the GOP front-runner. The move may also have been a result of a previous debate involving only Haley and DeSantis, in which Haley did not perform as well as expected and DeSantis ultimately defeated her for second place in Iowa.

Haley had argued to caucusgoers that electing her gives Republicans a better chance of defeating Biden in November, pointing to survey data that shows her with the largest lead in the GOP field in a theoretical general election matchup . On X, DeSantis said that Haley is afraid to debate because she doesn’t want to answer tough questions. He accused them of running to become Trump’s vice president and said he looked forward to debating on two empty stages in the Granite State this week.