Nearly all of the Republican candidates took time to do an interview with the Reagan Presidential Foundation the day of the debate at the Reagan Library, but one candidate was notably absent: real estate mogul Donald Trump.
"I wish I had a better answer than 'he simply blew us off,' but, he simply blew us off. He never made his appointment," John Heubusch, the executive director of the Reagan Foundation told BuzzFeed News.
"There were two others we had planned to do but because of scheduling difficulties, they didn't happen," he added. "Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul. In both cases, the candidates tried to do the interviews but the first debate had already started."
Heubusch asked the candidates a series of questions about the debate, Ronald Reagan, and the other candidates in videos that were uploaded to the foundation's YouTube channel.
Trump's staff had committed to do the interview after he arrived for the walkthrough of the debate stage, but Trump missed the debate walkthrough and subsequently missed the interview.
"His staff noted for us that he was going to try to do the interview during that time frame," said Heubusch. "But for reasons unknown to us, he never made it to the walkthrough at all which meant he couldn't do the interview either. So there was never a specific time that his team agreed to have him do the interview but there was the expectation that he would try in accordance when he was scheduled to be here for the walkthrough."
Trump has flowered Reagan with praise throughout his campaign, even citing Reagan as a justification for changing his position on several issues.
"Look, Ronald Reagan was a Democrat. In fact, he was on the liberal side of being a Democrat," Trump told ABC News This Week earlier this year. "And he changed, and he did a very good job. And I worked with him, and he liked me a lot, and I liked me a lot. But I worked with him. And he was a terrific guy, but he was a Democrat, and George, he was sort of a liberal Democrat, and he changed. And I have evolved, and I have evolved very strongly, and I'm a conservative and I have tremendous support, but I also have a lot of support among Democrats."
A Trump aide didn't return a request for comment.