FACT CHECK: Trump Didn’t Refuse to Debate Without Johnson

by Kody Fairfield

According to an article dated September 4, 2016 and written by the Santa Monica Observer, the Donald Trump for President 2016 campaign will pull out of the scheduled September 26 debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton unless third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are also allowed to participate.

This would be a shocking turnaround, because it was reported on August 3, 2016 on The Libertarian Republic that Trump would rather not have the third-party candidates on stage, and more recently by The Intercept that Trump wanted to go “head to head” and saying that the third party candidates aren’t “getting any numbers.”

Moreover, the Santa Monica Observer does not seem to be a credible source of news, as there are some glaring signs that the publication may be an unreliable resource. The first being that the site is called the Santa Monica Observer, but the URL for the site is “Santa Monica Observed.” Secondly, this piece appears to be quite ambiguously authored by the Observer Staff. Thirdly, when The Libertarian Republic reached out to confirm the source of information by telephone, the mailbox of the publication appears to be full. Most importantly however, is the fact that this “staff” appears to have left out any credible citation or source for their claims supposedly coming out of the Donald Trump 2016 Campaign; claims that upon further investigation cannot be found being reported by any other trusted media source.

While it would be nice to see a change in Trump’s position on the third-party candidates, unfortunately this does not appear to be the case. TLR has reached out again via email to try and potentially confirm or discount the claim, and this article will be updated if any new information on this claim is found.