Donald Trump asks his Instagram, Twitter followers for advice on attending the Fox News debate

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last updated 27 January 2016

Who needs a campaign manager and cadre of advisers when your Instagram and Twitter followers can make decisions for you?

Should I do the #GOPdebate?A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Jan 26, 2016 at 10:04am PST

Donald Trump said on Monday he wasn't sure if he would participate in the Fox News Republican debate on Thursday, and called moderator and Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly "biased" and "unfair." On Tuesday, he turned to his Instagram to further blast Kelly, proclaiming in a video: "Megyn Kelly is really biased against me. She knows that, I know that, everybody knows that. Do you really think she could be fair at a debate?" The video was captioned "Should I do the #GOPdebate?"

Not content to leave this decision in the hands of his Instagram followers, Trump went to Twitter and put up a poll: "Should I do the #GOPdebate?" So far, more than 33,000 people have weighed in, with 18 hours left of voting time. It might not matter what they say, though — during a press conference in Iowa Tuesday evening, Trump said he "most likely" won't do the debate, called Kelly a "lightweight," and questioned "how much money Fox is going to make from the debate without me."

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In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson mocked Trump for bailing on the debate: "We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president — a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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