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      Republican contenders gather for key debate with Trump again absent

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      Seven Republican presidential contenders gathered in California on Wednesday night for the second primary debate of the 2024 election season, but the absence of Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner in the race for the party’s nomination, again loomed large over the event.Seven candidates qualified for the second debate, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute in Simi Valley, California. Those candidates were Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, the former vice-president Mike Pence, the former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and the North Dakota governor Doug Burgum.Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor who participated in the first primary debate, did not appear on Wednesday because he failed to meet the heightened polling requirements outlined by the Republican National Committee.Trump skipped the event – as he skipped last month’s debate – and instead delivered a speech in Michigan, where auto workers have gone on strike to demand pay increases. A day earlier, Joe Biden joined some of the striking workers on the picket line, and the back-to-back events provided an odd preview of the likely matchup in the 2024 general election.The second debate comes as Republican primary candidates have struggled to put a dent in Trump’s significant polling lead, even as the former president faces 91 felony charges across four criminal cases. One NBC News poll conducted this month showed Trump has the support of 59% of likely Republican primary voters, giving the former president a 43-point edge over DeSantis. Besides Trump and DeSantis, every Republican primary candidate remains mired in the single digits, the poll found.DeSantis in particular could benefit from a breakout moment to help dispel mounting doubts over his ability to challenge Trump for the nomination. The Florida governor has seen his polling numbers tumble in recent weeks, with one New Hampshire survey showing DeSantis dropping to fifth place in the second voting state.With less than four months left for the Iowa caucuses, the pressure is escalating for candidates to quickly prove their mettle in the primary. One Republican candidate, the Miami mayor Francis Suarez, has already dropped out of the race, and others may soon follow suit if they cannot gain momentum in the coming weeks.But some of the candidates, including Hutchinson, insist they will keep fighting for the nomination despite the significant headwinds against them. In a statement released on Monday, Hutchinson said he would move forward with events planned in early voting states even after he failed to qualify for the second debate.“I entered this race because it is critically important for a leader within the Republican party to stand up to Donald Trump and call him out on misleading his supporters and the American people,” Hutchinson said. “I intend to continue doing that.” More

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      The winners and losers of the first GOP debate – podcast

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      Republican presidential candidates took to the stage this week to try to convince voters they should be the one to take on Joe Biden in 2024. There was one notable exception – but Donald Trump was still inescapable for his opponents.
      Joan E Greve speaks to the former GOP communications director Tara Setmayer about everyone’s performance on the night, and whether these debates even matter when the missing frontrunner is so far ahead in the polls

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      The Guardian view on the US Republican debate: stumped by Trump | Editorial

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      Donald Trump stayed away from Wednesday’s Republican candidates’ debate in Milwaukee. Yet he remained the evening’s dominant presence. The former president’s poll lead among Republican supporters for the 2024 US presidential contest is so strong that he could afford to do this. His absence deliberately belittled both the televised event, as he simultaneously gave an imperiously misleading social media interview to Tucker Carlson, and his eight challengers, who were left vying to impress in a fantasy “What if?” contest over the choice for a party not in fact dominated by Mr Trump.Absence also allowed Mr Trump, on the eve of his latest court appearance in Atlanta and now facing 91 felony counts in four separate criminal cases, to avoid offering himself as a target to his eight rivals. Not that he need have worried about that. Most of them went out of their way all evening to pay him repeated homage. No one did this more shamelessly than the Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who told the audience both that Mr Trump was the best Republican president of the 21st century and that, if elected, Mr Ramaswamy would instantly pardon him for whatever he may have been convicted of in the meantime.By identifying deliberately with Mr Trump’s outsider status, Mr Ramaswamy did two things. He made a bid to be Mr Trump’s running-mate next year and he also separated himself from the platform’s professional politicians. These seven all see themselves, with varying degrees of credibility, as the alternative candidate to Mr Trump. Their shared problem is that the party shows little sign of being interested in such a person. Certainly not in the former vice-president Mike Pence, whose certification of Joe Biden’s victory in January 2021 was supported by most of his fellow candidates but remains heretical to Trump supporters. And probably not in the Florida governor Ron DeSantis either, who entered the debate as the nominal chief rival to Mr Trump but who once again did relatively little to cement that claim.There were, nevertheless, clashes and revealing evasions. Mostly, however, they were over the degree of ferocity that the candidates would bring to promoting the party’s priorities rather than over whether the priorities were desirable in themselves. One bidding war of this kind focused on militarising the US’s southern border. Another on rolling back the Biden administration’s climate crisis agenda. A third came over entrenching an abortion ban at federal level, a pledge from which the sole woman in the debate, Nikki Haley, demurred. One striking divergence came on Ukraine, whose defence, for Republicans like Mr Ramaswamy, runs counter to the isolationism that Mr Trump has made integral to America First rhetoric, but which for older politicians like Chris Christie and Mr Pence remains a geopolitical commitment that must be honoured.In the past, candidates’ debates have sometimes had dynamic political consequences. Not this time. The Republican party is too far gone for that. It is too dominated by Mr Trump. It is too obsessed with talking to its own echo chamber. It is too fanatical about its agenda. It is too dependent on electoral dark arts. The net result is that it has won the popular vote in US presidential contests only once since 1988. This week’s debate was a mealy-mouthed and discreditable event that changes nothing. The Republican party needs the courage to call out Mr Trump and his lies and take a new path. But there was no inkling of that in Milwaukee. More

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      Republican candidates grapple with post-Roe positioning on abortion

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      Eight Republican presidential hopefuls clashed over the future of abortion access on Wednesday night in the first debate of the 2024 election cycle.Without the specter of Roe v Wade looming overhead, the candidates faced a new litmus test on abortion: whether or not they support a nationwide ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.The former vice-president Mike Pence, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott all pledged to support a federal 15-week ban.The question from the moderator Martha MacCallum had noted that abortion had consistently been a losing issue for Republicans in state ballots since the Dobbs decision.Nevertheless just one candidate, the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, decisively rejected the idea that Congress ought to regulate abortion access.Burgum, who signed North Dakota’s six-week abortion ban in April, said the conservative mission to overturn Roe was predicated on the belief that states should be allowed to set their own rules on the procedure.“What is going to work in New York will never work in North Dakota and vice versa,” Burgum said.For decades, Roe v Wade offered Republican candidates a convenient boogeyman. The supreme court ruling was not just about abortion – swing state conservatives like Burgum could point to Roe as an example of federal overreach.But Wednesday’s debate signaled a schism in the GOP’s position on abortion.In a post-Roe landscape, one year after Senator Lindsey Graham first introduced a federal 15-week ban bill in Congress, Republicans were forced to choose between their purported support for states’ rights and their opposition to abortion access.Burgum was the lone voice that chose states’ rights.Pence and Scott, both evangelical Christians, said they support a 15-week ban because abortion is a “moral” question that necessitates federal intervention.Scott said states like “California, New York and Illinois” should not be allowed to offer broad access to the procedure.Pence said abortion was “not a states only issue, it’s a moral issue”.The former vice-president, who has centered abortion in his bid to court socially conservative voters, condemned his opponents for refusing to back a federal ban.“I’m not new to this cause,” Pence said on Wednesday night. “Can’t we have a minimum standard in every state in the nation?”In his opening remarks, Pence lauded the work of the Trump administration, which placed three conservative justices on the US supreme court and “gave the people a new beginning for the right to life”.Pence also criticized the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who suggested that it would be difficult to gain the requisite congressional support to pass a federal abortion ban.Haley, the only woman on Wednesday’s debate stage, said Republicans should instead pursue pragmatic legislative goals that could garner bipartisan support in Congress.“Let’s find consensus, can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions?” she said.In his response, Pence directly addressed Haley: “Consensus is the opposite of leadership.”Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, a powerful anti-abortion lobbying group, praised Pence, Hutchinson and Scott for offering “a clear, bold case for national protections for the unborn at least by 15 weeks”.“The position taken by candidates like Doug Burgum, that life is solely a matter for the states, is unacceptable for a nation founded on unalienable rights and for a presidential contender,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president, in a statement on Wednesday night.Last month, Dannenfelser issued a similar condemnation of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for his reluctance to back a federal ban.DeSantis has supported bills restricting access to abortion – including a six-week ban in his own state of Florida, but has stopped short of saying he would support a federal ban.Dannenfelser said the Republican presidential candidate should “work to gather the votes necessary in Congress” to pass a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, adding that DeSantis’s failure to support the ban was “unacceptable”.“There are many pressing legislative issues for which Congress does not have the votes at the moment, but that is not a reason for a strong leader to back away from the fight,” she said in a statement last month.On Wednesday night, Fox News moderators twice asked DeSantis to clarify his position on federal abortion restrictions, but the Florida governor refused to provide a direct answer.“I’m going to stand on the side of life,” DeSantis said. “I understand Wisconsin is going to do it different than Texas, I understand Iowa and New Hampshire are going to be different, but I will support the cause of life as governor and as president.”Notably, Donald Trump – the presumed GOP frontrunner – skipped Wednesday night’s debate.Earlier this year, Trump criticized DeSantis’s position on abortion, calling Florida’s six-week ban “too harsh”.But the former president appears to share DeSantis’s hesitations about the federal 15-week ban, dodging questions about the proposed restrictions since launching his re-election campaign in March.The Guardian reported in April that Trump considers a federal abortion ban a losing proposition for Republicans, though his exact vision for the future of US abortion access remains unclear. 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      Republican hopefuls shrug when asked about climate crisis during debate

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      Unlike in recent election cycles, most Republican presidential hopefuls this time around didn’t flat out deny that the climate crisis is real. But on the Fox News debate stage, they made clear that they’re not interested in dwelling on the issues – or doing much about it.On Tuesday night, the eight candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed in the reality of human-caused global heating. They all punted.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, immediately derailed efforts to elicit a clear yes or no response. “Let’s have this debate,” he said, before proceeding not to have it at all, instead criticising Joe Biden’s response to the fires in Maui.Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, was notably the only candidate to full-throatedly deny climate science, making the unsubstantiated claim that “more people are dying due to bad climate change policies than they are due to actual climate change”.There’s no discernible trend of deaths linked to policies encouraging renewable energy. However, extreme heat – fueled by the climate crisis – killed about 1,500 people last year, according to Centers for Disease Control records. Researchers estimate that the true figure is closer to 10,000 people every year.Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, on the other hand, said “climate change is real” but then pushed off all responsibility to take care of it on India and China. Both those countries have lower per-capita carbon emissions than the US. And as of the latest figures, from 2021, no country had emitted more carbon dioxide since 1850 than the US.The South Carolina senator Tim Scott didn’t offer much in terms of solutions earlier, pointing a finger at the continent of Africa, as well as India and China. Africa accounts for one-fifth of the world’s population and produces about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Association, while disproportionately experiencing the consequences of climate chaos. The US is responsible for about 14% of global emissions.Nobody meaningfully addressed the question posed by Alexander Diaz of the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organisation: “How will you as both president of the United States and leader of the Republican party calm their fears that the Republican party doesn’t care about climate change?”In a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll, 35% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they think climate change is a major factor in the extreme heat that the US has experienced recently, compared with 85% of those who lean Democratic. Overall, nearly two-thirds of Americans who experienced extremely hot days said climate change was a major factor.Young Republican voters, however, seem increasingly concerned about the climate crisis. A 2022 Pew poll found that 73% of Republicans aged 18-39 thought climate change was an extremely/very or somewhat serious issue.Meanwhile, the rightwing groups have been working to boost the fossil fuel industry while undermining the energy transition. Project 2025, a $22m endeavor by the climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, has developed a presidential proposal that lays out how a Republican president could dismantle US climate policy within their first 180 days in office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe GOP candidates who have held public office have already given voters a glimpse of how they might approach the climate crisis. Governor DeSantis has supported projects to build seawalls and improve drainage systems as Florida faces increasingly powerful hurricanes and storm surges, as well as threats from sea level rise. But he has refused to acknowledge the role of global heating on these disasters, scoffing at the “politicization of the weather” and pushing bills banning Florida cities from adopting 100% clean energy goals. He also barred the state’s pension fund from considering the climate crisis when making investment decisions.Donald Trump, who did not attend the debate, has done even more to impede climate action. As president, he rolled back nearly 100 climate regulations, according a New York Times tally.Among the candidates who do support doing anything about the climate crisis, most think that thing should be carbon capture. Haley, who as US ambassador to the United Nations helped orchestrate the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement, has presented carbon capture technologies and tree planting as a way to keep burning fossil fuels while slowing the climate crisis.The consensus among climate scientists is that while such technologies could be a tool in fighting global heating, an overreliance on them could cause the world to surpass climate tipping points. More

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      Spectre of Trump haunts debate as candidates jostle for spotlight

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      During the first Republican debate on Wednesday, eight candidates attempted to cast themselves as viable alternatives to Donald Trump while, for the most part, studiously ignoring the shadow of the doggedly popular former president who declined to appear on stage.The Republicans alternatively railed on government excesses – promising, for example, to slash funding for federal programs – while debating the merits of a federal abortion ban and calling for an increasingly militarized southern border.The debate was somewhat calmer without belligerent Trump, with the exception of outsider tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who clashed repeatedly with former vice-president Mike Pence, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. Other than his increasingly aggressive approach to immigration, Ron DeSantis – meant to be Trump’s most likely challenger – remained relatively passive.The debate opened with a focus on the economy, as Fox News moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum played a clip of the viral conservative folk hit Rich Men North of Richmond, in which country artist Oliver Anthony describes his economic struggles while lamenting poor people “milkin’ welfare”. The candidates launched into a brief discussion of the economy – the first and last point on which they appeared to entirely agree.On the war in Ukraine, the Republicans diverged sharply in their view of the ideal role of US funding for the Ukrainian military. Ramaswamy, who accused supporters of Ukraine of neglecting “people in Maui or the south side of Chicago”, drew sharp rebuke from Christie, who said that “if we don’t stand up to this kind of autocratic killing, we will be next”, describing in vivid detail Russia’s bloody occupation of Ukraine. Pence echoed Christie’s position, calling Vladimir Putin a “dictator”.“I do not want to get to the point where we’re sending our military resources abroad where we could be better using them here at home to protect our own borders,” replied Ramaswamy.The Republicans also used the discussion of the war in Ukraine to pivot to the topic of immigration, articulating a vision of a militarized southern US border. DeSantis, whose floundering campaign has suffered repeated false steps and who largely hung back during the debate, jumped into the fold on that topic.“I’m not gonna send troops to Ukraine, but I am gonna send them to our southern border,” said the Florida governor, adding that he would deploy “lethal force” to slow immigration and proposed sending troops across the border “on day one”.When moderator MacCallum introduced the thorny question of abortion, which has energized Democratic voters since Roe v Wade was overturned, the candidates raced to claim their anti-abortion bona fides while splitting over the question of a federal ban.DeSantis defended his hardline position on abortion in Florida while invoking an odd story about a woman named Penny, who, he said, “survived multiple abortion attempts” and “was left discarded in a pan”. Haley, meanwhile, shied away from endorsing a federal ban, arguing that it would be challenging to find “consensus” on the issue.Pence and the South Carolina senator Tim Scott endorsed a federal ban. “We cannot let states like California, New York and Illinois have abortion on demand,” said Scott.As predicted, the spectre of Trump haunted the GOP debate, even as the frontrunner sat the debate out, opting instead for a prerecorded interview with Tucker Carlson on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. When Fox News moderators asked which candidates would still support Trump if he is convicted in a court of law, Ramaswamy and Christie immediately clashed, with Ramaswamy accusing the government of using “police force to indict its political opponents”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The more time we spend on this the less time they talk about issues you wanna talk about,” Baier admonished the crowd, which erupted in jeers when Christie accused Trump of engaging in “conduct … beneath the office of president of the United States”.In response to the question of whether Pence was justified in certifying the 2020 election, every candidate expressed support for the former vice-president – except DeSantis, who skirted the question, saying: “It’s not about January 6 of 2021, it’s about January 20, of 2025, when the next president is going to take office.” Pressed on the question, DeSantis said he had “no beef” with Pence but declined to directly affirm Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.For his part, Pence put a finer point on the subject: “The American people deserve to know that Trump … asked me to put him over the constitution,” he said.Outside the debate hall, a sweltering day gave way to a muggy night in Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold, where voter turnout efforts by grassroots groups like Bloc – Black Leaders Organizing Communities – can determine who wins statewide elections. The critical state has emerged as one of the last true swing states in the country, delivering a narrow win to Biden in 2020 only after Trump won the state by a similarly thin margin in 2016. Underscoring the importance of the state, the Republican National Committee will return to Milwaukee in July 2024.After the debate wrapped, a spirited Donald Trump Jr wandered through a small crowd of reporters, complaining that Fox News had not granted him access to the “spin room”, where candidates gather after the debate, and talking up his father. “I don’t think Trump’s going down after this. I think he’s gonna go up.”Trump is set to reclaim the spotlight on Thursday when he says he will voluntarily surrender himself at the Fulton county jail in Georgia. More

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      Republicans feud over Trump, abortion and climate in first 2024 primary debate

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      Republican presidential candidates clashed over Donald Trump’s legal woes during the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign season, underscoring the former president’s absence from the event and casting a spotlight on his potential vulnerabilities in a general election rematch against Joe Biden.Nearly an hour into the debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Fox News hosts Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier asked the eight candidates on the stage whether they would still support Trump as the Republican presidential nominee if he were convicted of the charges he faces. Six candidates – North Carolina’s Governor Doug Burgum, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, the former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the former vice-president Mike Pence, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina’s Senator Tim Scott – indicated they would still support Trump. Only two candidates – the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson – said they would not.Christie, a vocal critic of Trump, called on the fellow debate participants to “stop normalizing this conduct”.“Whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of the president of the United States,” Christie said. When his criticism was met with some boos from the debate crowd, Christie added: “Booing is allowed, but it doesn’t change the truth.”Ramaswamy jumped on Christie’s comments, echoing Trump’s complaints about the alleged politicization of federal law enforcement. “We have to end the weaponization of justice in this country,” Ramaswamy said.The debate came one day before Trump was expected to surrender to authorities in Fulton county, Georgia, where he has been charged on 13 felony counts related to his efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. The former president faces 91 total felony counts across four criminal cases.But a CBS News/YouGov survey compiled last week found that Trump now holds his largest polling lead to date, as he won the support of 62% of likely Republican primary voters. The survey showed Trump beating his next closest competitor, DeSantis, by 46 points, with every other candidate mired in the single digits.Rather than attending the debate, Trump chose to sit down for an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which was available on X, formerly known as Twitter, minutes before the debate began. Trump cited his standing in the polls to justify skipping the debate, mocking his opponents’ struggles to gain momentum in the race.“You see the polls that have come out, and I’m leading by 50 and 60 points and some of them are at one and zero and two. And I’m saying, do I sit there for an hour or two hours or whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people who shouldn’t even be running for president?” Trump told Carlson. “I just felt it would be more appropriate not to do the debate.”Although Trump’s absence and his criminal charges shaped much of the debate, the candidates also sparred over key policy issues like abortion and climate change. Discussing federal abortion policy in the wake of the reversal of Roe v Wade, Pence praised a 15-week abortion ban as “an idea whose time has come” and DeSantis expressed pride over signing Florida’s six-week abortion ban into law.But Haley was more hesitant to embrace a potential federal ban, a proposal that is widely unpopular with the American people. Describing herself as “unapologetically pro-life”, Haley argued a federal ban would not pass Congress and called on Democrats and Republicans to “find consensus” on abortion access.Discussing the climate crisis, Ramaswamy drew some boos from the debate crowd when he denied the unequivocal truth of human-made climate change. “The climate change agenda is a hoax,” Ramaswamy said.Christie retorted: “I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT.”It was one of several insults directed at Ramaswamy, who has climbed into a distant third place in national polls. Mocking Ramaswamy’s inexperience, Pence said: “Now is not the time for on-the-job training. We don’t need to bring in a rookie.”Several other presidential candidates – including the rightwing commentator Larry Elder, the former Texas congressman Will Hurd and the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez – failed to meet the Republican National Committee’s qualifications for the debate, leaving them out of the event and further diminishing their primary prospects. Hurd elected to live-tweet his reactions to the debate, and he criticized his opponents who said they would still support Trump in the event of a conviction.“Anyone who raises their hand in support of Donald Trump as our party’s nominee even if convicted in a court of law is unfit to serve as president,” Hurd said.But Trump’s criminal charges appear to have only fortified his position as the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary. According to the CBS poll, 73% of Trump’s voters say they back the former president partly to “show support for his legal troubles”.With such stalwart support for Trump among the Republican base, it remains unclear how any of the participants in the Monday debate could capture the nomination. The electoral threat of nominating a twice-impeached former president, who now faces nearly 100 criminal charges, did not escape the attention of at least one debate participant.“We have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America,” Haley said. “We can’t win a general election that way.”The Guardian’s David Smith contributed reporting from Milwaukee More

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      Trump, Ukraine and a viral song: key takeaways from the Republican debate

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      Eight Republicans vying for the party nomination took the debate stage on Wednesday night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, throwing punches over Ukraine, a federal abortion ban and more, hoping to increase their chances at defeating the no-show frontrunner.Absent was Donald Trump, whose pre-taped interview with the rightwing media personality Tucker Carlson simultaneously published on Twitter, now known as X, and sought to siphon away screen time from the debate housed on Fox News, which famously ousted Carlson earlier this year.But Trump’s presence loomed over the debate, even as candidates seemed to somewhat hold back from criticizing the ex-president, as Fox debate moderator Bret Baier put it, “the elephant not in the room”.Here are eight key takeaways from the night:A memorable opening with a viral song and jabs at ‘Bidenomics’The debate kicked off with a question about a controversial conservative country song, Rich Men North of Richmond, whose lyricist complains about taxes and nods to conspiracy theories surrounding the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.“Our country is in decline,” said Ron DeSantis, to whom Fox News hosts Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier lobbed the first question. “We need to send Joe Biden back to his basement and reverse American decline.”Tim Scott touted his record of voting down government spending bills in the Senate, as well as his work on the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a Trump-era piece of legislation that cut taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals.But Nikki Haley placed the blame on Republicans for spending exorbitantly during the pandemic, calling out Trump for increasing the national debt by $8tn and DeSantis, Scott and Mike Pence for voting to raise the national debt.Energy independence was also a focus, with candidates broadly advocating for increasing domestic energy production.“Unlock American energy. Drill, frack, burn, embrace nuclear,” said Ramaswamy, who later claimed that “the climate change agenda is a hoax”.Trump, ‘the elephant not in the room’Although Trump was absent, hosts asked candidates to show where they stand on the ex-president.Responding to a call for a show of hands by the Fox host Bret Baier, most candidates seemed to agree they would support Trump as president, even if he is convicted. Trump has amassed 91 felony counts in four criminal cases this year.“Someone’s got to stop normalizing this conduct,” said Christie, who raised his hand briefly and begrudgingly and has been a loud critic of Trump. “Whether or not you believe the criminal charges are right or wrong. The conduct is beneath the office of the president of the United States.” His comments were met with boos from the audience.Ramaswamy, who has defended Trump across all four indictments, continued to do so. He has repeatedly said he would pardon Trump as president and repeated that on the debate stage.Haley added her derision: “Trump is the most disliked candidate in America. We can’t win an election that way.”The candidates overall said they supported Mike Pence in his decision to refuse to stop the electoral certification, though Ramaswamy ardently defended Trump through the night and DeSantis refused to answer a question about whether he agreed Mike Pence was right.The war in Ukraine was a sticking pointRamaswamy came out the strongest against increased aid to Ukraine, calling it a “disastrous” decision and a “no-win war”. And DeSantis, who walked back earlier statements calling the war a “territorial dispute”, said he thinks Europe should remove itself from the situation.Haley, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, delivered perhaps the strongest stance yet, calling Ukraine “a pro-American country that was invaded by a thug”.Ramaswamy took a dig at Haley, wishing her “well” on her “future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon”.Haley countered, saying that Ramaswamy would hand Ukraine to Russia and China and make America less safe. “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows,” Haley shot back at Ramaswamy, who said: “Ukraine is not a priority for America.”Christie, who made a visit to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, weeks earlier, took the opportunity to blast Trump, who has said the war in Ukraine isn’t a vital interest. “This is the Vladimir Putin who Donald Trump called brilliant and a genius. If we don’t stand up against this type of autocratic killing in the world, we will be next,” said Christie.DeSantis would send troops to the southern borderDeSantis said he would use lethal force at the US southern border to counter drug cartels entering the country and treat them as “foreign terrorist organizations”. DeSantis also said he would divert funds from Ukraine to do so and vowed to send troops.“When these drug pushers are bringing fentanyl across the border, that’s going to be the last thing they do. We’re going to use force and we’re going to leave them stone cold dead,” said DeSantis.Scott echoed DeSantis’s rhetoric, saying the southern border is the “most pressing need” when it comes to national security. He also laid out spending plans to complete Trump’s border wall with $10bn, though he did not mention Trump. Hutchinson also agreed that he would use lethal force, nodding to his time as an under secretary on border security for George W Bush.Candidates split over federal abortion banEach of the eight candidates have at some point identified themselves as anti-abortion but differed over implementing a federal abortion ban.Haley, the only woman on the debate stage, called herself “unapologetically pro-life” but warned against “demonizing” the issue, hedging against a federal abortion ban. DeSantis, who signed into law a six-week ban in Florida saying he believes in a “culture of life”, refused to answer whether he would approve a national ban.Pence, an evangelical Christian who has been the most outspoken anti-abortion candidate, said he would move to implement a national ban at “when a baby is capable of feeling pain” though he did not explicitly describe that length.Tim Scott also weighed in and said he would fight for a minimum 15-week ban on abortion. Burgum, who signed into law a six-week ban in North Dakota, said he would not sign a federal abortion ban.(Mostly) quiet on the climate crisisWith the exception of Ramaswamy declaring “the climate change agenda” a “hoax”, the candidates largely avoided a question about whether Republicans care about the climate crisis, a top issue among younger voters.DeSantis dodged the question, which pointed to the Hawaii wildfires, attacking “corporate media” for treating Republicans and Democrats differently, claiming Biden was on a beach in Delaware during the disaster.Haley was the only candidate to wholly assert that the climate crisis is real but said the onus should be on China and India to “really lower their emissions”.Night of introductionsWith the frontrunner absent, the lineup on the debate stage featured a bunch of relatively unknown faces.In his first remarks, Ramaswamy didn’t answer a question about the economy but instead said he guessed the audience would want to know “Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name and what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage?”That earned him a later attack from Christie, who said: “The last person in one of these debates … who stood in the middle of the stage and said: ‘What’s a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here’ was Barack Obama, and I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same type of amateur.”Ramaswamy shot back: “Come on and give me a hug! … Give me that bear hug bro”Scott, the only Black candidate on the debate stage, repeatedly brought up his back story, growing up in poverty and being raised by a single mom.And Burgum, the governor of North Dakota who arrived at the debate after a trip to the ER earlier Tuesday, mentioned at several points his “small-town” identity. More