Kash Patel, an attorney who held key positions in the intelligence and defense community during President Donald Trump’s administration, has defended the former president’s decision to skip the Republican presidential debates this week in his bid to retake the White House in 2024.
In an interview with NTD News’ “Capitol Report,” Mr. Patel touted President Trump’s leading the polls in the Republican primary field, and said that in his assessment, Mr. Trump has already virtually locked in the Republican nomination.
“I think the debate is over. I think President Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. And that decision was made by the voters some time ago,” Mr. Patel said. “I understand the public’s desire to have everybody in one place, but I think when you speak from a political perspective, President Trump has such an advantage. The only reason that [Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel] and company wants him on stage and the other candidates want them on stage is because they want America to watch. And they know without him there, [they’re] not going to watch.”
Mr. Patel added that President Trump has sufficiently spelled out his 2024 platform on social media and on the campaign trail.
“Look, I’ve never been the political pollster-genius myself, but these numbers, even by my bad math are … it’s such a divide. I mean, you’re talking 30, 40, 50 points,” Mr. Patel added, describing President Trump’s lead over other Republican candidates in the field.
President Trump similarly cited his polling lead when he announced on his Truth Social media account on Sunday that he would not attend the Aug. 23 debate. He claimed a 46-point lead over the next-closest candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and argued that the public already knows who he is.
“The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had, with Energy Independence, Strong Borders & Military, Biggest EVER Tax & Regulation Cuts, No Inflation, Strongest Economy in History, & much more. I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!” the former president wrote on Truth Social.
Rather than attend the debate, which will be hosted by Fox News, it’s been reported that President Trump may counter-program the event in a sit-down interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Mr. Patel said an interview with Mr. Carlson would further draw attention away from the RNC debate and diminish whatever polling boosts Mr. Trump’s primary opponents might derive from Wednesday night’s debate.
Georgia Indictment a ‘Political Prosecution’
President Trump’s decision to skip the debate on Wednesday means he will also avoid being directly pressed by his primary opponents or debate moderators on the four criminal indictments he currently faces. Last week, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis unveiled the latest criminal indictment against the former president, alleging he and 18 other co-defendants broke the law in how they went about contesting the 2020 election results.
Addressing the Fulton County indictment, Mr. Patel said “I think the prosecution is baseless.”
In an Aug. 15 statement after Ms. Willis announced the indictment, President Trump’s 2024 campaign argued that her case is tainted by political bias. The Trump campaign team alleged she had derived much of her re-election funding through posts making reference to her efforts to investigate the former president, and had launched a new campaign website earlier this month—just days before announcing her indictment.
“The fact that she put out on her campaign trail that she was going to ‘get’ Trump and now she wants to try [18] co-defendants and Trump—what, on Super Tuesday or something like that of next year—of course this is a political prosecution,” Mr. Patel said.
Mr. Patel further attacked a major premise of the case: that President Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election were criminal because he knew he had lost the election.
“No one in the world can convince any juror that Donald Trump did not believe he won the 2020 election,” Mr. Patel said. “He’s allowed to have that belief. You may disagree with him, but challenging that is a constitutional precept to freedom of speech and politics and to criminalize that just endangers it.”
NTD News reached out to Ms. Willis’ office for comment but did not receive a response by the time this article was published.