If there’s anything Republicans love, it’s a conspiracy theory about Democrats getting debate questions in advance.
There was the theory that Kamala Harris was wearing “Bluetooth headphones” during her debate with Donald Trump, which turned out to be impossible, even aside from Harris’ long-established distaste for Bluetooth technology. There’s been some type of conspiracy theory of this nature about every presidential debate in recent memory, sometimes involving secret earpieces and “hidden microphone packs” or other alleged methods of cheating, none of them close to ever being substantiated.
The Trump-Harris debate was also followed by the “ABC whistleblower affidavit,” also alleging that Harris received the debate questions in advance; despite some pretty major right-wing figures promoting it, this too turned out to be a hoax.
Now, there’s a report that Donald Trump may have himself received questions in advance- not at a debate, but rather at a Fox News town hall.
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Per CNN, the allegation comes from a new book called “Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power,” by Politico reporter Alex Isenstadt, and set to be released in March. Per the book, in January 2024 Trump agreed to appear at a Fox News town hall, which came at the end of a period during the primaries when Trump and Fox had been feuding.
A mole within Fox sent the Trump camp all questions he would be getting at a Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum town hall in January 2024, allowing him to workshop his answers ahead of time, including his “I’m not going to have time for retribution” linehttps://t.co/uDvmOjv8P5
— Alex Isenstadt (@politicoalex) January 8, 2025
Trump and his team “were still peeved at Fox, whose coverage they continued to find antagonistic, and did not want the former president to do the prime time event,” the book says. “But Trump had a good relationship with Baier—they were golf buddies—and wanted to do a sit-down.” So shortly before the interview, per the book, Trump’s team received the questions.
As characterized by the author, it was a “mole” within Fox, as opposed to the interviews themselves, who leaked the questions.
“About thirty minutes before the town hall was due to start, a senior aide started getting text messages from a person on the inside at Fox. Holy s–t, the team thought. They were images of all the questions Trump would be asked and the planned follow-ups, down to the exact wording. Jackpot. This was like a student getting a peek at the test before the exam started.”
Trump campaign received advance questions for Fox News’ January 2024 town hall from a network insider, according to a new book — CNN pic.twitter.com/vWWN9gHG9D
— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) January 8, 2025
“While we do not have any evidence of this occurring, and Alex Isenstadt has conveniently refused to release the images for fact checking, we take these matters very seriously and plan to investigate should there prove to be a breach within the network,” Fox News said in a statement to CNN.
It recalls an incident from the 2016 campaign, when there were reports that Donna Brazile, at the time a DNC interim chairwoman and CNN contributor, had passed some questions from a primary debate on to Hillary Clinton’s team.
In truth, most political candidates participating in debates and town halls have a general idea of what topics are going to come up, simply because it’s never much of a secret what the major issues are in each campaign. The candidates running in 2024, for instance, always knew that questions were coming about immigration, crime,
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
