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      Trump’s ‘intolerance towards everyone’ encourages hate, Chris Christie says

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      Donald Trump’s “intolerance towards everyone” encourages antisemitism and Islamophobia in the US amid tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas, said Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.“When you show intolerance towards everyone – which is what he does – you give permission as a leader for others to have their intolerance come out,” Christie told CNN on Sunday.“Intolerance towards anyone encourages intolerance towards everyone. And that’s exactly what’s going on here.”Like the rest of the Republican field, Christie lags far behind Trump in national and key state polling.Christie endorsed Trump in 2016 and supported him throughout his subsequent presidency. The ex-New Jersey governor remained supportive of Trump even after Trump appeared to have given him Covid-19, sending him into intensive care.But Christie turned against the former president over his election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress.Now a rare candidate willing to attack Trump, particularly over his 91 criminal charges and assorted civil trials, Christie has nonetheless only really registered in polling in New Hampshire, the second state to vote – and then only to scrape third place, 30 points behind.Speaking on Sunday, Christie was asked about a recent New York Times piece in which he was quoted as saying he did not think “Trump’s an antisemite” – even though he has often used stereotypes most say qualify for that label.For instance, in a 1991 book, a former staffer wrote that Trump said: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”Trump denied saying that.To the New York Times, Christie said Trump’s “intolerance of everybody” had “contributed to” surging bigotry across the US.“He says what he says, without regard to the fact that he’s perceived as a leader and that his words matter,” Christie said. This, he said, meant bigots “think you’re giving them permission be a bigot and that’s even worse than them thinking you are one”.On Sunday, Christie also said Trump was now not the only leader giving followers an excuse to show bigoted behaviour, pointing to tensions over the Israel-Hamas war in US colleges.“University administrators and presidents … have been unwilling to stand up against antisemitism on their campuses,” Christie said.“There should be no campus in this country where a Jewish student is afraid to leave their dorm, a Jewish student is afraid to go to their classes, a Jewish student is afraid to go to even have a meal in the dining hall. I mean, that is outrageous, and it’s wrong.“And so in the end … I think that there have been a lot of people contributed to it. And I believe Donald Trump’s intolerant language and his intolerant conduct gives others permission to act the same way.” More

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      The Republican presidential debate was a televised temper tantrum | Moira Donegan

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      Because I did something terrible in a past life and have to be punished for it in this one, on Wednesday night I watched the Republican presidential debate. It was the third in a series of televised temper tantrums by a dwindling field of eligible candidates, all pretending that there is a meaningful contest for the Republican presidential nomination and that any of them have the slightest chance of winning it.In the past, these events have ranged from the chaotic to the deranged, as characters like Tim Scott put a smiling, chipper, aw-shucks sheen on a lurid vision of enforced male supremacy, Ron DeSantis publicly indulges wild fantasies about sending American soldiers to conduct summary executions of Mexican drug cartel leaders on the soil of a sovereign foreign nation, and Chris Christie puts on a poor imitation of someone who believes in his own relevance.And like the past debates, there was plenty of rancor and personal barbs on Wednesday night, plenty of morbid daydreaming about future regimes of social control, and plenty of fact-free declarations about the supposed causes of America’s plights. There was yelling, and there were insults. Somehow, the whole thing still managed to be incredibly tedious.Donald Trump, the man who will be the Republican nominee unless he dies before next November, was not on stage. The candidates did their usual dance of trying not to attack Trump or alienate his base – which meant, in effect, that none of them could make much of a case for themselves. Nikki Haley, once a member of Trump’s cabinet, somewhat weakly suggested that Trump was not the right candidate “for now”. Even Chris Christie, whose candidacy is largely seen as a kamikaze mission meant to hurt Trump rather than a serious bid for office, could barely manage to point out that the frontrunner’s legal problems – he faces 91 felony charges – would probably distract him from the duties of office.For all of the five contenders on stage – Haley, Christie, DeSantis, Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy – their very candidacy suggests a discomfort with Trump: if they really thought he was the best guy for the job, they wouldn’t be running. But a taboo on criticizing Trump remains the one constant that unites the fractious, dysfunctional and internally chaotic Republican party, the one thing that all of them know it would end their political careers to do. They couldn’t go after Trump. So they went after each other.It would be wrong to say that the candidates’ attacks on one another were exactly ideologically driven. As they gave rambling, euphemism-laden, largely dishonest answers to a series of policy questions, it was hard to discern anything like a coherent policy orientation from any of them – save for Haley, who as in every debate emphasized her foreign policy credentials and seemed interested in reviving some early-century neoconservative positions about the efficacy and usefulness of American foreign intervention.Others wandered and waffled in their policy prescriptions: when they were asked a question that confused or frustrated them, as happened frequently, both the Florida governor DeSantis and South Carolina senator Tim Scott would pivot to bizarre non-sequiturs about closing the southern border. Ramaswamy pushed an isolationist, “America-first” approach, but nevertheless echoed calls by DeSantis to use the military to discipline southern border immigration. (Ramaswamy, it should be noted, did distinguish himself by also cautioning about crime and immigration at the Canadian border. “Build both walls,” he said.)Tim Scott, a Christian conservative pitching his candidacy as a return to traditional social hierarchies, “faith-based morals” and compassion, called for a military strike on Iran. They decried protests in support of Palestinian human rights as “pro-Hamas” and vowed to deport foreign students who participated, and to cut off the funding for any college or university that did not sufficiently suppress pro-Palestinian speech. They seemed united in encouraging Israel to take a genocidal, eliminationist approach to Palestinians in Gaza, with DeSantis telling Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job”, Haley instructing him to “finish them”, and Ramaswamy offering a disturbing fantasy about severed Palestinian heads being displayed on spikes. The candidates also largely agreed, as it happened, that they would cut Medicare and social security benefits. They set about arguing with each other about how much.The biggest rivalry of the night was between a pair who are emerging as recurring antagonists in these debates: Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. The pair have opposing visions of foreign policy, with Haley calling for greater engagement and intervention abroad and Ramaswamy serving as a conduit for the Republican party’s post-2016 return to nativist isolationism. But they also represent two distinct career paths for Republican politicians. Haley’s rabid, sadistic conservatism is the result of an old-fashioned kind of political vetting – a long career of political ascent, coupled with an affect of credentialed competence. Ramaswamy, by contrast, is a public buffoon, someone with no political experience who has gained his spot on the debate stage with provocative, hateful, algorithmically boosted social media content of outlandish public quackery.Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that the two had their most pointed clash over TikTok. The pair had been fighting all night: Ramaswamy made a misogynist remark calling Haley “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels”. Haley shot back that her shoes were five-inch heels, and quipped, somewhat nonsensically, that she wore them “for ammunition”. But they fought most bitterly when moderators asked the candidates if they would ban TikTok, the social media app that has become a bete noire on the right. Ramaswamy jumped in to point out that Haley had criticized him for campaigning on TikTok, even though her adult daughter also used the app – he suggested that Haley was not exercising adequate control over her family. Haley told him to leave her daughter out of it, and called him scum.It was a mistake, and it was also, perhaps, one of the more relatable moments for Nikki Haley, a politician so stuffy and rehearsed that one wonders if she has ever had a thought that does not occur to her in a pollster’s voice. Ramaswamy is scum: he’s self-interested and cynical, indifferent to truth, with a black hole of ambition in the place where other people might have a soul. She was right to be angry. But public expressions of anger rarely serve women.But what might have been most conspicuous about the debate was what was largely absent from it: for more than an hour and a half, the moderators did not ask about abortion, even though the issue has dominated American electoral politics up and down the ballot for nearly a year and a half. Anger over the overturning of Roe v Wade has become an abiding motivator for voters, with the issue persisting in relevance long after most pundits thought it would fade from national attention, and it is driving unlikely wins for Democratic candidates and their priorities. Abortion had delivered electoral wins for Democrats just on Tuesday, when the issue drove voters to the polls nationwide. Abortion proved to be a decisive issue not only in Ohio, where an abortion rights amendment to the state constitution was ratified by a wide margin, but also played a pivotal role in races in Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.When the moderators finally asked about “the way forward” on abortion, in their last question of the night, the candidates mostly hemmed and hawed. Some backtracked or hedged their anti-choice stances; others doubled down. They could not deliver a real answer for the same reasons they could not attack Donald Trump: neither stating their real positions against abortion or admitting that the issue has become a political albatross for the Republican party would be viable paths for their continued careers. They’re not ready to make a real argument on the issue to the American people. Luckily for them, I suppose, none of them will have to.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Support for Israel and verbal sparring propel fiery third Republican debate

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      The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and other foreign policy issues dominated Wednesday’s fiery third debate of Republican presidential hopefuls in Miami. Candidates pledged wholehearted support for Israel’s military response following last month’s Hamas attacks, and clashed over Ukraine, China and immigration.The debate, minus Donald Trump, the runaway favorite for the party’s 2024 nomination who was hosting his own private rally elsewhere in the area, was a more bitter affair than its predecessors in Wisconsin and California. Lively verbal sparring sometimes regressed into insults, with Nikki Haley at one point calling one of her rivals “scum”.The candidates also grappled over immigration, the devastatingly bad night for Republicans in Tuesday’s elections, and the party’s staunchly anti-abortion stance on abortion that analysts say was the reason.Discussion over Israel’s actions in Gaza were, however, most prominent.“I will be telling Bibi [Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu] to finish the job once and for all with these butchers Hamas. They’re terrorists. They’re massacring innocent people. They would wipe every Jew off the globe if they could,” Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, said.Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, was equally forthright. “The first thing I said to him when it happened was, ‘finish them’. They have to eliminate Hamas, [we have to] support Israel with whatever they need whenever they need it, and three, make sure we bring our hostages home.”DeSantis took credit for chartering flights to rescue stranded Americans in Israel, but overreached by claiming “there could have been more hostages, if we hadn’t acted”. The DeSantis flights, which some have criticized as a de facto foreign policy, took place after Hamas took about 240 hostages on 7 October.Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been criticized for controversial racial comments, took potshots at each other. Haley’s policies, Ramaswamy said, fueled war, and in a reference to a former vice-president called her “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels”.“I wear five-inch heels, and don’t wear them unless you can run on them,” she shot straight back. “I wear heels not for a fashion statement – they’re for ammunition.”A further unpleasant exchange between the two came in a discussion about the Chinese social media platform TikTok. “In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time, so you might want to take care of your family first,” Ramaswamy sniped.“Leave my daughter out of your mouth,” Haley interjected. “You are just scum.”Haley performed well in the first two debates, and has enjoyed a recent surge in popularity. She had painted DeSantis as an isolationist at a time when, she said, the US needed to work with global partners, and their feud continued Wednesday with bickering over China, each accusing the other of operating policies favorable to one of America’s foes.But the pair were united in tearing strategically into the absent the former president, who they trail by a significant margin in the race for the nomination. Trump, DeSantis said, “owes it to you to be on this stage”.“He said Republicans were gonna get tired of winning. Well, we saw it last night: I’m sick of Republicans losing,” DeSantis said, referring to Tuesday’s Democratic electoral successes in Kentucky and Virginia.Haley said: “I think he was the right president at the right time. I don’t think he’s the right president now. I think that he put us a trillion dollars in debt and our kids are never gonna forgive us for that. I think the fact that he used to be right on Ukraine and foreign issues – now he’s getting weak in the knees and trying to be friendly again.”The South Carolina senator Tim Scott, who is trailing in the polls, was asked how he would assist Ukraine in its battle against Russia, but pivoted to criticizing the Biden administration’s border policies. He warned that “terrorist cells” were entering the country from Mexico.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThen he said: “The American people are frustrated that they do not have a president who reminds us and tells us where’s the accountability. Where are those dollars? How are those dollars being spent? We need those answers for us to continue to see the support for Ukraine.”Joe Biden has asked Congress for $106bn for Ukraine and Israel aid.Scott said he wanted to see the southern US border closed to immigrants, Ramaswamy said he would build a wall there and at the northern border with Canada, while DeSantis repeated his previous promise to send troops to the border and shoot drug smugglers “stone-cold dead”.Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, spoke of a need to deter China from invading Taiwan as the debate moved to other foreign policy topics. “We need to go straight to our nuclear submarine program, and we need to increase it drastically,” he said.Christie weighed in on the TikTok debate, saying the platform was “not only spyware – it is polluting the minds of American young people all throughout this country, and they’re doing it intentionally”. As president, he said, he would ban it.Regarding abortion, which was behind many of the Republican losses on Tuesday, Haley expounded a softer position than other candidates that might yet resonate with voters. “As much as I’m pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me for being pro-life,” she said.Trump, meanwhile, says he is so far ahead in the race for the nomination, more than 44 points, according to Real Clear Politics (RCP), as to make debate meaningless. In campaign messaging on Tuesday, he called it “a battle of losers”.While Trump’s own candidacy is mired in legal troubles that could yet derail him, his remaining rivals are not even close. Scott, Christie and Ramaswamy are all polling in the low single digits, leaving DeSantis and Haley, themselves only at 13% and 9%, per RCP, as the most viable alternatives.There will be one more Republican debate, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on 6 December, before the 2024 primaries begin with the Iowa caucuses on 15 January.The field, already down to five in Miami after the withdrawal of former vice-president Mike Pence and non-qualification of North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, could be further reduced by then. And after Wednesday’s debate concluded, a campaign adviser said Trump would also not be present in Alabama. More

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      Calls to ‘finish’ Hamas and ‘you’re just scum’: key Republican debate takeaways

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      The third Republican debate was held in Miami on Wednesday, with frontrunner Donald Trump once again foregoing the debate for his own rally nearby.The pool has dwindled since the last debate, and Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott and Chris Christie seemed to be more serious and focused this time around as they answered questions on the Israel-Hamas war, immigration, abortion and the federal budget. Even so, the debate had moments where it devolved into a shouting match, with petty barbs and personal attacks.Here are the main things to know about the debate.1. The Israel-Hamas war was top of mind – and the rhetoric turned uglyThe candidates largely tried to one-up each other on their unequivocal support for Israel and its military response to the Hamas attacks on October 7, with the exception of Vivek Ramaswamy, who said the US should not be as actively involved in regional wars.“The first thing I said when it happened was, I said, finish them. Finish them,” Haley said about Hamas, touting her former position as special envoy to the United Nations under Donald Trump. DeSantis, meanwhile, focused on the flights he chartered for Floridians in Israel before overstating his aid to the Israeli government.When asked about how the impact of the war was playing out on college campuses in the US, however, DeSantis seemingly denied the existence of Islamophobia, and said he would quash some pro-Palestine student groups.The candidates did not address the estimated 10,000 Palestinian civilians killed by Israel’s strikes and its ground invasion in Gaza.2. After Republican election losses, candidates tried to regain ground, especially on abortionThe day before the debate, the Republican party saw major losses across the country, from the Virginia state legislature to Kentucky’s governorship. The candidates addressed that head on.“We’ve become a party of losers,” Ramaswamy said in his opening statements. “We got trounced last night in 2023. And I think that we have to have accountability in our party.”Many of the election losses were in states where Republicans were trying to enact stricter abortion laws after Roe v Wade was overturned last year. DeSantis, Christie and Haley tried to address that issue by backing away from rightwing anti-abortion rhetoric and focusing on states’ rights to choose.Haley, in particular, took the most measured stance, saying she did not judge those who support abortion and that a federal abortion ban was politically untenable.3. Haley and DeSantis continued to battle for second placeWhile neither Haley nor DeSantis are polling anywhere close to Trump, they stood out in the pack throughout the debate.Haley focused on her experience in the UN and on foreign policy issues, and DeSantis on his tenure as Florida governor. Both seemed to try to remain more composed than usual, with Haley only reacting to barbs from Ramaswamy.“Our world is on fire,” Haley said in her closing remarks. “We can’t win the fights of the 21st century with politicians from the 20th century.”Not far from the debate hall, Trump held a campaign rally. But fellow Florida man DeSantis avoided many direct attacks on the former president.“This is not about me, this is about you,” he said in his opening and closing remarks.4. There were personal attacks – particularly involving RamaswamyRamaswamy started his debate by attacking the media, the RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, and even the NBC moderators, seemingly as part of his attempt to portray himself as the anti-establishment candidate.He then turned his focus to Haley. “Do you want a leader from a different generation who is going to put this country first, or do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels?” he said, criticizing her hawkish foreign policy positions.And when it came the entrepreneur’s turn to talk about his policy on TikTok, Ramaswamy referred to Haley and said: “In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time. So you might want to take care of your family first.”“Leave my daughter out of your voice,” Haley shot back. When Ramaswamy went on, she dismissed him, saying: “You are just scum.”5. Candidates were more serious and focused than in past debatesThe earlier debates, with larger candidate pools, have tended to be circus-like in their atmosphere, with more riffs and off-topic detours. From the opening statements, the debate seemed to be more focused on the issues Americans are grappling with, from war in the Middle East and in Ukraine, and kitchen-table issues such as social security.The seriousness of the candidates seemed to reflect that the primary season was just around the corner, and that positioning themselves strategically around Trump would mean building more trust with American voters. More

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      Mike Pence’s exit from White House bid is winnowing of crowded field, rivals say

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      Mike Pence’s surprise withdrawal from the Republican presidential nomination race on Saturday is part of natural winnowing of the crowded field, rivals of the former vice-president said Sunday – and one that could help their quest of candidates to wrestle the nomination from overwhelming frontrunner Donald Trump.“In the end, the race is narrowing, which everyone said it would,” said former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, one of Trump’s fiercest Republican critics and one of four who have qualified for a third TV debate next month in Miami that may not have included Pence, who, he told CNN’s State of the Union, had run “a tough race, a good race”.The former vice-president’s decision to make an early exit may also have been influenced by fundraising difficulties he was known to be having. Announcing his departure from the field saying it had “become clear” he did not have a path to victory, he vowed to help elect “principled Republican leaders”.Christie, who is at 3.1% support in primary polling, put his finger on Pence’s fundamental misalignment – accepting Trump’s hand as his running mate in 2016, resisting his boss on January 6th, then defending his administration record while simultaneously urging his party to turn away from Trump populism and back to conservative values.“There are people who want to have it both ways,” Christie continued his comments to CNN on Sunday. “They want to support him … on the other hand they want to go after him.”But Christie also carries that burden, having sought a cabinet appointment in the Trump administration in 2016.The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is widely presumed to be the main beneficiary of Pence’s exit. In a speech on Saturday, the former US ambassador to the UN praised Pence as a “good man of faith” who had “fought for America and he has fought for Israel”.Haley’s polling is rising amid endorsements from Republican politicians and pundits prepared to break with Trump. “She’s breaking through at the right moment,” Republican strategist Mike Murphy told Politico last week. “Everything else has been ridiculous preseason coverage … I think it all starts now.”According to FiveThirtyEight, Haley is polling in third place nationally at 8% among registered Republican voters behind Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at 14%. But support for DeSantis is falling. In the key early primary state of New Hampshire Haley beats DeSantis 19% to 10%, according to a recent survey.But both DeSantis and Haley, along with Vivek Ramaswamy and Christie, still hugely trail Trump at 58% support nationally – and the Maga king’s support only seems to grow with each criminal and civil indictment he is served.Governor DeSantis also rallied behind Pence, calling him “a principled man of faith who has worked tirelessly to advance the conservative cause” in a post on X.After Pence stepped aside, Trump called on him for his endorsement: “I don’t know about Mike Pence. He should endorse me. You know why? Because I had a great, successful presidency and he was the vice-president.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the former president also took a swipe at his Christian fundamentalist vice-president, who refused to help in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election and held the confirmation vote after the Capitol building had been cleared of January 6 protesters.“People in politics can be very disloyal,” Trump said at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, according to The Hill.Pence’s exit is also a stark reminder of Trump’s hold over the party: former vice-presidents are typically seen as a formidable primary challengers. But in recent years, that assumption has weakened.Neither Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, or now Pence, have automatically managed or sought to immediately trade in the vice-presidency for the presidency.But as ABC News political contributor Donna Brazile pointed out on Sunday, Pence did not resonate with voters – a former vice-president who was unable to get traction, raise money or distinguish himself. “He tried to change the dynamics of the Republican party but it’s not changing. It’s now behind Donald Trump come trial or tribulations.” More

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      Crosstalk and weak zingers hand win to absent Trump at Republican debate

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      It’s hard to pick the low point of a debate that dissolved frequently into incoherent crosstalk and included former vice-president Mike Pence, a Christian conservative who has famously said he would never dine alone with a woman other than his wife, attempting to make a joke about his sex life. (“My wife isn’t a member of the teachers union, but I gotta admit I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years,” he said.)In a debate conducted not far from Ronald Reagan’s grave, seven GOP presidential candidates shouted and sniped at each other for two hours without producing a single standout moment.Whether echoing Donald Trump’s rhetoric, or attempting to criticize him – Chris Christie dubbed him “Donald Duck” for choosing not to participate – none of the presidential hopefuls succeeded in upending the expectations of the race. Once again, Trump won the GOP debate without even having to show up.On substantive issues, the Republican candidates endorsed virulent transphobia, with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy arguing that “transgenderism” is “a mental health disorder”. He said he wanted to end birthright citizenship, so that children born in the US to undocumented parents would not be given citizenship.Florida governor Ron DeSantis suggested he would address the fentanyl overdose crisis by using the US military against drug dealers in Mexico, and treat them like “foreign terrorist organizations”. He also did not believe Republican losses in the 2022 midterm elections should be blamed on the party’s embrace of extreme anti-abortion policies.Pence said his plan for preventing future mass shootings was not new gun control laws, but instituting “a federal expedited death penalty for anyone involved in a mass shooting”. (Research shows that many mass shooters are suicidal.)But some of the brutal Trumpian rhetoric seemed to have lost its punch. “Yes, we’ll build the wall,” DeSantis said, sounding almost bored.On Fox News after the debate, former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway argued that “nobody made the case” that they had something different from Trump to offer voters. “They want to build a wall, they want to secure the border, they sound a lot like him,” she said.Trump’s rivals also tried, and largely failed, to produce memorable attack lines against each other.South Carolina senator Tim Scott tried to criticize former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley for a set of $50,000 curtains at her residence as UN ambassador. “Do your homework, Tim, because Obama bought those curtains,” Haley responded.Haley, in turn, savaged 38-year-old entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy for doing business in China and for joining the social media app TikTok, which Ramaswamy defended as a logical thing to do to help the party attract younger voters, even as he said that people under 16 should not be “using addictive social media”.“TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps that we could have,” Haley said. “Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.”“We can’t trust you,” she said. “We can’t trust you.”The reviews were mixed. New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman wrote early in the debate, “This is unwatchable.” But Fox News’ Laura Ingraham argued after the debate that Haley and Ramaswamy were the most promising candidates in two flavors – Ramaswamy as the populist, Haley as the more traditional conservative supported by GOP donors.Ramaswamy seemed at one point to flaunt his youth and inexperience, acknowledging that as the “new guy”, he expected that voters would see him as “a young man who’s in a bit of a hurry, maybe a little ambitious, bit of a know-it-all”.“I’m here to tell you, no, I don’t know it all. I will listen. I will have the best people, the best and brightest in this country, whatever age they are, advising me,” he promised.Scott earned applause from the audience and praise from Sean Hannity for saying that, while he had experienced discrimination as a Black man, “America is not a racist country.”At the end of the debate, moderator Dana Perino of Fox News asked the candidates: “Which one of you onstage tonight should be voted off the island?” Almost everyone refused to reply. When Christie did, he attacked the one person who wasn’t on that particular island.Donald Trump. More

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      Republican debate: Trump attacked for being absent as reports say he will skip third one too – as it happened

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      From 8h agoChris Christie turned a question about crime fighting into an attack on Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination who has snubbed this debate.“And I want to look at a camera right now to tell you, Donald, I know you’re watching. You can’t help yourself. I know you’re watching, OK,” the former New Jersey governor said.“And you’re not here tonight. Not because of polls, and not because of your indictments. You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on the stage and defending your record. You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen. You keep doing that, no one up here is gonna call you Donald Trump any more. We’re gonna call you Donald Duck.”For two hours, the seven Republican candidates gathered in California duked it out over everything from energy to immigration, all in the absence of Donald Trump, the far-and-away frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination. We’ll see if anything that was said on the debate stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this evening changed the contours of the race, but one thing is now clear: none of these candidates will share the debate stage with Trump. He’s opted to skip the third debate set for Miami in November, and his campaign is calling for the Republican Party to cancel it altogether.Here are some highlights from tonight’s event:The reviews of the second Republican presidential debate are rolling in from political analysts and they are … not great.Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics:Fernand R. Amandi of public opinion research firm Bendixen & Amandi:GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who thought Nikki Haley and Tim Scott’s argument about curtains was a low point:But did think Chris Christie handled questions about abortion in a way other Republicans could learn from:Republican rivals hoping to face Donald Trump on the debate stage won’t get their chance. CBS News reports that the former president will skip the third and final debate of the primary process, set for November in Miami:In fact, the Trump campaign is out with a statement calling on the Republican National Committee to cancel the third debate entirely. Here’s the campaign’s senior advisor Chris LaCivita:
      Tonight’s GOP debate was as boring and inconsequential as the first debate, and nothing that was said will change the dynamics of the primary contest being dominated by President Trump. President Trump has a 40- or 50-point lead in the primary election and a 10-point lead over Joe Biden in the general election, and it’s clear that President Trump alone can defeat Biden.
      The RNC should immediately put an end to any further primary debates so we can train our fire on Crooked Joe Biden and quit wasting time and money that could be going to evicting Biden from the White House.
      Mike Pence claimed that during his and Donald Trump’s administration, they “reduced illegal immigration and asylum abuse by 90%.”That’s not really true.The number of Border Patrol apprehensions was higher during the Trump administration than during the last four years of Barack Obama’s administration. There was a change in how US Customs and Border Protection reports migrant encounters during the pandemic, complicating some of this data – pre-pandemic, the agency reported enforcement actions taken under immigration law, but after, it also began reporting actions taken under the Title 42 public health policy that authorized officers to immediately send most migrants at the border back to Mexico.Analysis by Politifact found that Pence’s 90% reduction figure could be approximated by comparing enforcement data from May 2019, the month that saw the highest number of apprehensions, with data from April 2020 – right as governments around the world moved to severe restrict travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic.“That’s a severely cherry-picked period,” the fact-checking group writes.It’s worth noting that the moderators’ attempts to spur even more conflict between the candidates was not particularly well received.None of them were willing to name another to be voted off the stage, or the island, as it were:The candidates are now leaving the stage after the moderators wrapped up the second Republican presidential debate with a question that, fittingly, invoked Donald Trump.In the debate’s final moments, the candidates were asked by the moderators to write down which other candidate they would – in the style of pioneering reality TV program Survivor – vote off the stage. Chris Christie chose Trump, the frontrunner for the nomination who did not attend.“This guy has not only divided our party, he divided families all over this country. He’s divided friends all over this country,” Christie said. “I’ve spoken to people and I know everyone else has, who have sat at Thanksgiving dinner or at a birthday party and can’t have a conversation anymore if they disagree with Donald Trump. He needs to be off the island and taken out of this process.Vivek Ramaswamy disagreed. “I think Trump was an excellent president. But the America first agenda does not belong to one man. It does not belong to Donald Trump. It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to you, the people of this country. And the question is who’s going to unite this country and take the America first agenda to the next level?” he said.“We did not just hunger for a single man, we hungered for the unapologetic pursuit of excellence and yes, I will respect Donald Trump and his legacy because it’s the right thing to do.”And with that, the debate was over.Call it the Squabble in South Carolina.While the debate may be taking place in Simi Valley, California, the two candidates hailing from the Palmetto state – Senator Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, the state’s former governor – just got into it over gas taxes, curtains and several other things.“As the UN ambassador, you literally put $50,000 on curtains in a $15m subsidized location,” Scott said, while Haley defiantly interjected, “bring it, man.”“You got bad information,” Haley, who served as UN ambassador under Donald Trump, replied. “On the curtains, do your homework, Tim, because Obama bought those curtains.”“Did you send them back?” the senator asked.“It’s the state department!” Haley shot back at Scott. “Did you send them back? You’re the one that works in Congress … You are scrapping right now!”“We do not intend to go ahead like this,” the moderator, Stuart Varney, said, before sending us all, mercifully, to a commercial break.Ron DeSantis was asked about curriculum in Florida that said, enslaved people “develop skills which in some instances, could be apply for their personal benefit”.DeSantis called this “a hoax that was perpetrated by Kamala Harris”, mispronouncing the vice-president’s name. In fact, the quoted bit is taken straight from Florida’s African American history standards.In an impassioned speech reacting to the standard, Harris said: “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not stand for it.”Ron DeSantis just won himself some applause with a well-timed interjection to tout his accomplishments as Florida governor.Amid bickering over government spending between Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, DeSantis piped up.“I’m the only one up here who’s gotten in the big fights and has delivered big victories for the people of Florida. And that’s what it’s all about,” DeSantis said to cheers.“You can always talk but when when it gets hot in there, when they’re shooting arrows at you, are you going to stand up for parents rights, keep the state free? Are you going to be able to do all those things? And in the state of Florida because of our success, the Democratic party lies in ruins. We have won the big fights. We have turned our state into a Republican state.”Doug Burgum really wants to answer these questions, but the moderators aren’t having it.They asked Nikki Haley elaborate on her energy policies – but not Burgum. “As the only leader of an energy state, can I answer?” interjected Burgum, whose state has a sizable oil industry. But the answer the North Dakota governor got was no.He tried again after Ron DeSantis was asked the same question, but was rebuffed. “We can’t talk over each other. We must respect each other,” moderator Stuart Varney insisted.As candidates address trans rights on stage, here’s a bit of context.Vivek Ramaswamy said: “Transgenderism, especially in kids is a mental health disorder.”This is false. Major medical organizations, like the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association (APA), say being transgender is not a mental disorder. Gender dysphoria is recognized as a medical condition that doctors agree should be remedied by offering gender-affirming treatment.From Mike Pence: “The Linn-Marr community schools in Iowa had a policy where you could you had to have a permission slip from your parents to get a Tylenol but you could get a gender transition plan without notifying your parents.”This is misleading. Linn-Marr’s policy directed educators to use students’ chosen names, without consulting with parents. That’s a far reach from a “gender transition plan”. Children under 17 seeking gender affirming care such as hormone replacement therapy or gender affirming surgery.Vivek Ramaswamy was the most pilloried candidate at the previous debate, and will likely win that dubious distinction after this debate.He recently joined TikTok, the controversial social media app many GOP candidates want to ban over allegations that it’s tied to the Chinese Communist party. Asked why he was on the app, Ramamswamy cited its popularity with young people, and said: “The answer is, I have a radical idea for the Republican party. We need to win elections, and part of how we win elections is reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are.”Nikki Haley did not like that response. “Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” she said, before going on to outline a number of privacy and national security concerns about the app.Mike Pence wants to “repeal the Green New Deal”. Too bad it’s never passed Congress or been signed into law…“Joe Biden’s Green New Deal agenda is good for Beijing and bad for Detroit. We ought to repeal the Green New Deal,” the former vice president said. “We ought to repeal the Green New Deal.”The Green New Deal is a climate legislation proposal that was never passed. Joe Biden did sign into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes key climate provisions is different.Although the IRA includes major investments in clean energy technologies – some of which have relied on critical minerals controlled by China. But the landmark climate investment is also considered a key step in reducing reliance on China for these minerals by increasing domestic supply. And while ramping up domestic extraction has raised new environmental concerns, Pence’s assertion is notably misleading.The IRA’s tax credits for electric vehicles, for example, come with the caveat that the materials used to manufacture the veible come from the US or countries with which the US has free trade agreements. The law also incentivizes domestic manufacturing.Doug Burgum did it again.The moderators didn’t call on him for a contentious question about social media app TikTok, so he just started talking, keeping the moderators from moving on to Ron DeSantis.“We will have to cut your mic and I don’t want to do that,” warned moderator Dana Perino. Burgum piped down.Raise your hand if you expected Mike Pence to discuss his sex life at this debate.Us neither. But discuss it he did. Chris Christie laid the groundwork while responding to a question about how he would close educational gaps with minorities, which he turned into an attack on teachers unions.“This public school system is no longer run by the public. It is run by the teachers unions in this country,” Christie said. “And when you have the president of the United States sleeping with a member of the teachers union, there is no chance that you could take the stranglehold away from the teachers unions.” That line was a reference to Jill Biden, who has taught at community colleges and is a union member.It got weird when the moderators, a few minutes later, called on Mike Pence. “By way of full disclosure, Chris, you’ve mentioned the president’s situation,” Pence said. “My wife isn’t a member of the teachers union, but I gotta admit I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years.” OK Mike. More

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      Trump, crime and bad jokes: key takeaways from the second Republican debate

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      The second Republican presidential debate – once again without frontrunner Donald Trump – took place on Wednesday evening at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.Amid the squabble of the seven candidates, all of whom trail Trump significantly, Americans were left to parse which direction the Republican party plans to take in 2024. Trump, meanwhile, gave a speech in Michigan, where autoworkers have been striking for better work conditions and pay.Here are the main takeaways from the two-hour debate that aired on Fox Business.The candidates finally called out Trump for his absence, and spoke out against him more oftenUnlike in the first debate, candidates Chris Christie and Ron DeSantis directly commented on Trump’s absence multiple times.“He should be in this room to answer those questions for the people you talked about who are suffering,” Christie said.Later, he added: “And you’re not here tonight. Not because of polls, and not because of your indictments. You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on the stage and defending your record. You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen. You keep doing that, no one up here is gonna call you Donald Trump any more. We’re gonna call you Donald Duck.”DeSantis, once seen as Trump’s main rival, also took on his fellow Florida man. “He should be on this stage tonight,” DeSantis said. “He owes it to you to defend his record.”The jokes were worse than usualFrom Chris Christie’s highly practiced Donald Duck quip to ultra-conservative Mike Pence’s weird foray into his sex life, the audience was mostly left to uncomfortably chuckle.Republicans continue to politicize crime to avoid talking about solutions to issues like gun violence, immigration and drug overdosesThe party has tried to hold up crime rates – which have continued to decline after the pandemic spike – to criticize attempts at police reform or gun control.DeSantis touted his ousting of “progressive prosecutors” who he claimed were making Floridians unsafe when they investigated police misconduct, while Nikki Haley tried to connect issues at the southern border with seemingly unrelated looting in Philadelphia this week.When faced with a question about the prevalence of school shootings in the US, Mike Pence said the “expedited” death penalty for the shooters would prevent more shootings.Children were at the center of multiple questions about daycare, education and transgender rights, but it mostly devolved into culture warsBuilding on the heated discussions about “parents’ rights” and school choice that escalated during the pandemic, the candidates doubled down on their cultural agendas.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDeSantis refused to backtrack on the part of his state curriculum that says enslaved people benefited from enslavement and touted Florida’s education record. Meanwhile, students and parents in Florida are organizing against the ongoing book bans and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric that Republicans have brought to endless school meetings.Pence said he would enact a national ban on transgender care when asked about violence against the LGBTQ+ community. Vivek Ramaswamy said a return to faith would motivate the youth, and claimed “transgenderism, especially in kids, is a mental health disorder”. (Major health organizations disagree.)Haley addressed the issue directly. “We have to acknowledge the fact that 67% of our eighth-graders are not proficient in reading or math,” she said. “And recently they came out and said our 12- and 13-year-olds are scoring at the lowest levels they have been scoring in reading and math in decades.”Abortion was almost overlookedUnlike in the previous debate, abortion took a backseat, despite the fact that Republicans have lost several recent elections to this issue after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year.DeSantis denied that abortion played a large role in those elections and implied Trump was turning on pro-life voters. Christie, however, talked about the need for Republicans to talk about the issue in a way that didn’t downplay the health of women caught in difficult circumstances.The Trump campaign may have revealed in an email blast who they feel most threatened byWhile Trump, speaking in Michigan, joked about there being no one at the debate fit for even the vice-presidency, a campaign email suggested otherwise. The email, with the subject “The Real Nikki Haley”, outlined her past quotes and positions to make her look hypocritical and weak.A recent poll showed that if Haley were the Republican nominee, she might beat Biden next year. More