Republican presidential candidates Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina will not appear on the main stage for the next GOP debate on Thursday. Fox Business, the media outlet broadcasting the debate, announced on Monday that the two fell short of the network's criteria for the first Republican debate of the year and just three weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

Fox announced how the stage will be set via Twitter:

With just seven candidates on the stage - Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich - Thursday's debate will be the smallest for the GOP yet, The Wall Street Journal noted. Based on the network's criteria, candidates had to either have placed in the top six in national polls, based on an average of the five most recent national polls recognized by Fox News, or have placed within the top five based on the average of the five most recent state polls in Iowa or New Hampshire.

In November, Fiorina said that she'll debate on either stage, saying, according to CNN, "We've had no trouble negotiating with networks and my policy remains what it's always been: I'll debate anyone, anytime, anywhere. We need to understand that the media is not going to be fair."

Rand Paul, however, is taking a very different stance, saying he'll skip the debate. "I'll be taking my campaign directly to New Hampshire and Iowa. I'm not going to be in South Carolina," Paul told CNN Monday evening, according to Time. "It's a mistake because the thing is we actually have been in the top five or six in most of the recent polls. In fact, last week in a national poll we were just one point out of fourth place. So I think it's a mistake to try to exclude me from the national debate."

With that statement, Paul is making good on a promise he has frequently made. Last week he told Politico, "I'm not sure where the purpose is anymore [of the undercard debate], if there ever was one." He added: "I think if you have a national campaign, you've raised a significant amount of money, you're on the ballot, you've employed staff and you're actively campaigning, you've got to be in the debate."

Paul has repeatedly criticized the debate formats, saying last month that he would flat out refuse to participate in any of the undercard debates.

"I won't participate in any kind of second-tier debate," the Kentucky senator said on Fox Business, BuzzFeed reported. "We've got a first-tier campaign. I've got 800 precinct chairman in Iowa. I've got a 100 people on the ground working for me. I've raised 25 million dollars. I'm not gonna let any network or anybody tell me we're not a first-tier campaign. If you tell a campaign with three weeks to go that they're in the second-tier, you destroy the campaign. This isn't the job of the media to pick who wins. The voters ought to get a chance."

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