Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said Thursday he’s pleased he’ll get to debate with Carly Fiorina at CNN’s main debate later this month.
CNN changed the rules for who gets to attend the main event, after Fiorina’s camp said CNN wasn’t taking into account late polls that show her in the top 10. CNN had been relying on older polls to see who gets to join the feature event, and those polls had Fiorina far outside the top 10.
“I think it’s great that she’s in the debate,” Trump said in a Thursday press conference in New York. “I was in favor of her being — I think she should be in the debate.”
An average of some national polls by RealClearPolitics, however, shows that there is a tie between candidates Chris Christie and Rand Paul for 10th place, meaning that CNN may actually make room for 11 on stage. Trump said that part of the arrangement bothered him.
“I don’t like the fact that there are 11 people now, as I understand it. They’re not getting rid of Rand Paul or somebody and they should because there’s too many people. Because when you have 11, you’re not going to hear me and you’re not going to hear other people talking and I think that’s too bad. I think 11 is a lot of people but I was very happy that she got into the debate because, frankly, she deserved to be in the debate.”
Because Trump and Fiorina have not had an especially friendly relationship of late, a face-to-face confrontation between the two could make for a contentious debate.
After the first GOP debate in early August, Fiorina chided Trump, who had criticized co-moderator Megyn Kelly for “unfair” questioning. “I think women of all kinds are really sort of horrified by this,” Fiorina said at the time.
Trump returned fire on social media.
“I just realized that if you listen to Carly Fiorina for more than 10 minutes straight, you develop a massive headache,” he wrote on Twitter.
