Trump will lose nothing by not participating.
The last Democrat debate had about 10.2 million viewers, and the last Republican debate about 11.1 million. The shine is off.
The debates have served their purpose for Trump, and so has "conservative" talk radio.
Look for Trump to open up a new front in the campaign without them, except maybe for Michael Savage on whose show Trump appeared today, and maybe Rush's show.
Trump's campaign announced he was "definitely not" participating in the FOX debate, as reported here in WaPo.
Limbaugh predicted otherwise today, here:
Now, let me get a show of hands in there. I got three people here. Could have been on the Texas grand jury, for all I know. How many of you think Trump is going show up at the debate on Fox?
All three think he's gonna show up. Exactly. Exactly right. This is called hyping the audience. This is called creating an even larger audience than Fox got when they had their 25 million or 24 million, whatever it was. There's no question he's gonna show up. Well, there might be a question.
