Donald Trump Jr. and his fiancé Kimberly Guilfoyle were led away by security after they attempted to crash the post-debate spin room after last Wednesday’s Republican primary debate, the Washington Examiner reported.
The “spin room” is where debate participants as well as their campaign surrogates traditionally answer questions from reporters and give their reactions to the debate.
Fox News had previously announced that Trump surrogates would not be permitted in the spin room since their candidate was skipping the debate. The cable news network said only Trump surrogates who were guests of credentialed media outlets would be allowed to enter the spin room.
Despite knowing that they were not permitted in the spin room, Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle staged an attempted crash with reporters in tow but were blocked by security.
According to reporter David Weigel, Guilfoyle denounced Fox News for barring them from the spin room, calling it “un-American” and claiming that not being able to enter the spin room violated her First Amendment rights.
In a video clip posted on X, Trump Jr. told reporters that he and Guilfoyle were initially told that they could go in the spin room, but claimed that Fox instructed the security guard not to let them in.
In his post on X, Trump Jr. accused Fox News of attempting to “censor and silence Trump supporters” in favor of the network’s supposed “hand-picked establishment candidates.”
But they weren’t “hand-picked” candidates. They were the candidates who participated in the debate. Donald Trump did not participate in the debate, therefore, Trump surrogates were not in the spin room.
Trump Jr. also claimed that Fox’s ratings are “dying” which is why tens of millions more people watched Tucker Carlson’s pre-recorded interview with Trump that aired on X at the same time as the debate.
However, Mashable reported on Thursday that the view counter shown on X for the Trump interview is wildly overstating the actual views.
While X tabulates that over 230 million watched the Trump interview by last Thursday, Mashable determined that the actual view count for the interview was only 14.8 million. But even that number is misleading since it includes anyone who watched at least 2 seconds of the 46-minute interview.
