Republican Candidate Admits on CNN He Hasn’t Actually Met Requirements For Debate Yet Despite Announcing He Had

Republican presidential candidate and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez admitted on CNN’s The Source, Friday that he has not yet actually met his party’s requirements to take part in the first Republican primary debate next week, despite already announcing that he had.

“You say that you have qualified to get on that debate stage on Wednesday night. The RNC, I should note, says that you have not yet qualified,” noted CNN host Kaitlan Collins, before asking Suarez, “Are you sure you’re gonna be there Wednesday?”

Suarez replied:

Yeah, I’m sure I’m gonna be there on Wednesday. We’ve been having conversations back and forth. They’ve never done this before, we’ve never done this before, and we are sort of crossing our Ts and going through the process. For example, we’ve shown them that we’ve reached the donor threshold by having, I think, 42,000 or so donations, but understandably, they need to audit that. So, there’s a process for them to audit that. We’ve sent them, just tonight, a couple of polls, including one by Kaplan Strategies where we’re actually at 2%, which would meet the national polls. They’re certifying that as well. So it’s a process, we understand it’s a process.

We did sign the loyalty pledge and we expect and hope that very, very shortly, in hopefully the next 24, 48 hours, but certainly by Monday we’ll know for certain. We’re planning on it, we’ve booked hotel reservations, we’re inviting people, we have a bunch of guests coming up from Miami.

Collins questioned, “And you’re confident, Mayor, that the polling will be there? Because we look at the RNC’s requirements and CNN’s reporting on these polls is that you’ve hit 1% in one qualifying national poll, you’ve hit one qualifying state poll, but you need one more of each to get on that stage. Are you confident you’re going to have those numbers?”

Suarez claimed, “We are, we are. We sent them a poll from Kaplan Strategies tonight, that’s a 2% poll, so we think that will qualify. They’re in the process of certifying it. They actually go through and sort of scrape it to make sure that it meets all of their requirements.”

The mayor added, “And then we believe there will be more polls between now and Monday that will also certify.”

“But you haven’t actually gotten that number yet to where the RNC says, ‘Yes, you’ve made it’?” asked Collins.

Suarez confessed, “Yeah. They have not yet given me sort of that final certification. There’s sort of a back and forth, like I said, and it’s a process that neither we nor they have ever done before. So we’re following it, we’re diligent with them, they’re being very responsive, and we’re hopeful to have that sort of seal of approval certification very shortly.”

Suarez — who is currently polling at an average of just 0.3% — announced earlier on Friday that he had qualified for Wednesday’s Republican primary debate. However, unnamed RNC officials told the AP that the statement was not true and that he had not yet met the official requirements.

The candidates confirmed to have met the RNC’s debate requirements are former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Vivek Ramaswamy, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

Watch above via CNN.