Trump campaign disinvites Gennifer Flowers to the debate

Gennifer Flowers and Larry King — (Image credit: Rene Macura/Getty Images)

Gennifer Flowers, the actress and Penthouse model who claims to have had a 12-year affair with former President Bill Clinton, on Saturday agreed to take a front-row seat at the first debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Monday night. On Sunday, the Trump campaign said she's not invited.

The cold shoulder came from both Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who said on CNN Flowers was never "formally" invited, and from vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, who told Fox News' Chris Wallace that Flowers will not attend.

The arrangement was originally suggested by Trump himself on Twitter Saturday in response to news that Clinton supporter Mark Cuban said he would sit in the front row. Whether Cuban or Flowers would even be permitted to take those seats is unclear; the candidates do have tickets to distribute as they please, but the Commission on Presidential Debates said it would "frown upon" prominent placement of either person.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.