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      Preparing to Fact-Check the GOP Debate: A Look at Possible Lines

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      Through stump speeches and statements on the campaign trail, the Republican presidential contenders have hinted at what they might say on the debate stage. Here’s a look at their possible lines.The top contenders in the Republican presidential primary — minus the most important one — will face off Wednesday night in the first debate of the 2024 race. The debate will provide the candidates, many who are relatively unknown to voters, an opportunity to refine their message and to test their attacks on rivals, hoping to deliver a zinger to stand out in a crowded field.Those statements may include exaggerations or outright misinformation about a host of subjects, like inflation, immigration, foreign policy and cultural issues. The candidates’ stump speeches and previous statements offer a glimpse of what the debate audience might hear.Here is a sampler of the kind of exaggerations, misleading statements and half-truths that could come up.Chris Christie“We should discuss why he promised to build a wall across the entire border and completed 52 miles of new wall in four years. At that pace, he’d need 110 more years as president to finish the wall.”This is partially true.Mr. Christie has made targeting former President Donald J. Trump — the front-runner for the Republican nomination, who is not attending this debate — central to his campaign and specifically criticized him for supposedly not fulfilling his campaign promises while in office.It is true that Mr. Trump said throughout the 2016 cycle that he would build a wall along the border and make Mexico pay for it. Mexico has not paid for any wall construction.However, Mr. Trump said he would build a 1,000-mile wall, not along the entire border as Mr. Christie has claimed. And while Mr. Christie’s 52-mile figure refers to one category of wall construction, the Trump administration built around 453 total miles of border wall starting in 2017, though most of the new barriers reinforced or replaced existing structures.Ron DeSantis“In Florida, our crime rate is at a 50-year low. You look at the top 25 cities for crime in America, Florida does not rank amongst the top 25.”This is partially true.Mr. DeSantis has played up his record as Florida’s governor and what he sees as legislative successes there throughout his presidential campaign.While Florida’s crime rate fell to a 50-year low in 2021, crime reporting was incomplete and provisional after a switch in how law enforcement agencies reported data. The crime rate that year included data from just 59 percent of agencies in Florida, leaving crime data for more than 40 percent of the state’s population unaccounted for, according to The Tampa Bay Times.Nikki Haley“Why was it last year that a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide? This is serious. We need to look at that. So let’s snap out of it. Boys go into boys bathrooms, girls go to girls bathrooms and if there’s something in between, go into a private bathroom.”This lacks evidence.Ms. Haley, the only woman in the Republican primary, has, like many candidates, leaned into issues involving gender identity and sexuality on the trail. Criticizing transgender athletes who compete in women’s sports has become one of her most reliable applause lines.There is no scientifically proven link between suicidal ideation and trans people competing in sports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this year that teenage girls are facing elevated suicide rates. Medical experts have said that while there are many potential causes, no evidence points to increased awareness of L.G.B.T.Q. issues as a causal or contributing factor.Mike Pence“The fact is, today abortion law in the United States is more aligned with China and North Korea than with Western nations in Europe.”This is misleading.Mr. Pence, the staunchest abortion opponent in the race, has frequently expressed support for a national abortion ban and called on other candidates to back a 15-week ban.The majority of European countries have legalized abortion up to 10 to 15 weeks of pregnancy and allow for abortions past the gestational limit if the parent’s life is in danger. Many laws in those countries are more permissive than they appear on paper and allow for exemptions upon request.China, in contrast, allows for elective abortions without specific gestational limits, but in recent years has said that it aims to reduce the number of “medically unnecessary” abortions. And it is unclear what North Korea’s laws are, given that the World Health Organization reported no documentation after 2015 on the procedure’s legality.Vivek Ramaswamy“There’s very little evidence of people being arrested for being armed (Jan. 6). Most of the people who were armed, I assume the federal officers who were out there were armed.”This is false.Mr. Ramaswamy has remained one of Mr. Trump’s most ardent defenders through his four indictments and said throughout his campaign that “systematic and pervasive censorship,” not Mr. Trump, was to blame for the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.The Justice Department reported that 112 individuals were charged with using a “deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer” and 104 were charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon as of Aug. 4. There is no way to know how many of the thousands there were armed, but Secret Service officials confiscated several hundred weapons that included knives or blades, pepper spray canisters, brass knuckles and tasers.And Mr. Ramaswamy himself condemned Mr. Trump on X, formerly known as Twitter, after the attack: “What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple.”Tim Scott“There have been more illegal encounters under Biden than the previous two administrations combined.”This is false.Mr. Scott, who has campaigned as a “happy warrior” with an optimistic message, has largely directed his criticism toward the Biden administration, particularly its handling of illegal border crossings.Reporting of immigration data changed in March 2020 from tracking “apprehensions” to “encounters,” a broader range of expulsions enabled by the Title 42 border policy that allowed for quicker removals during the Covid-19 pandemic, making comparisons across administrations inconsistent.But available data from U.S. Border Patrol showed that illegal immigration levels nationwide were still lower under Mr. Biden than under the Trump and Obama administrations combined. And PolitiFact reported that the Scott campaign used inconsistent metrics to back its claim. More

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      The Trump-Free Debate That’s All About Trump

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      Donald Trump may not be on the stage for tonight’s Republican primary debate, but at least eight other candidates will still have to contend with his presence — and his lead in the polls.The Opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg argues that tonight is an opportunity for Trump’s opponents to convince Republican voters that they can be as dominant as the former president, but without the legal baggage. The question remains, though: Will the Republican base buy it?Illustration by The New York Times; Photographs by Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times; Scott Morgan, Jim Young, Dan Koeck, Cheney Orr/Reuters; Ben Gray, Alex Brandon/Associated Press; Megan Varner/Getty ImagesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.This Opinion Short was produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd. It was edited by Stephanie Joyce and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Kristina Samulewski and Annie-Rose Strasser. More

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      A Stage of Eight Takes Shape for a Trump-Less First G.O.P. Debate

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      Eight Republican presidential hopefuls will spar on Wednesday night in Milwaukee, without the party’s dominant front-runner.Former President Donald J. Trump won’t be there. But eight other Republicans hoping to catch him are now set for the first debate of the 2024 presidential primary on Wednesday in Milwaukee, according to two officials familiar with the Republican Party’s decision.Those eight include Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has been Mr. Trump’s leading rival in most polling, and Mr. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Trump ally turned antagonist, has secured a spot, as has another vocal Trump opponent, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas.Two prominent South Carolina Republicans have also earned places onstage, Senator Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador. They will be joined by the political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota.The candidates will give Republicans a diverse field attempting to take on President Biden: six past or present governors, one Black candidate, two candidates born to Indian immigrants, one woman and one former vice president.A handful of others had been on the bubble heading into Monday evening. The Republican National Committee had imposed a 9 p.m. deadline for candidates to accumulate at least 40,000 donors and hit 1 percent in a certain number of qualifying national and state polls.But the two officials said that three candidates all fell short: Perry Johnson, a businessman who previously tried to run for governor of Michigan; Francis X. Suarez, the mayor of Miami; and Larry Elder, a talk-show host who made a failed run for governor of California. Those campaigns, already all long-shots, now face an even more uncertain future. The Lineup for the First Republican Presidential DebateThe stage is set for eight candidates. Donald J. Trump won’t be there.The R.N.C. had also required candidates to sign a pledge to support whomever the party nominates. At least one candidate has said publicly he would refuse to sign it: Will Hurd, a former congressman from Texas who has said he opposes Mr. Trump.With Mr. Trump opting to skip the debate entirely and citing his significant lead in the polls, much of the attention is expected to fall on Mr. DeSantis, who has steadily polled in second place despite some early struggles.The debate will be broadcast on Fox News at 9 p.m. Wednesday, with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum serving as moderators.Despite the candidates’ months of campaigning across the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina already, the debate represents the first moment that many voters will tune into the contest — or even learn about many of the candidates.“Most of what you do in this process is filtered through media,” Mr. DeSantis said while campaigning in Georgia last week. “Seldom do you get the opportunity to speak directly to this many people.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to draw a lot of attention at the debate, as the highest-polling candidate taking part.Christian Monterrosa for The New York TimesYet it remains unclear how much the debate will transform a race where Mr. Trump remains the prohibitive front-runner, leading the field by large double-digit margins. The hosts have said they plan to turn Mr. Trump into a presence, with quotes and clips from the former president, even though he will not be on the stage. So far, much of the race has revolved around Mr. Trump, with the candidates repeatedly questioned on his denial of the 2020 election results, his four indictments and his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The other candidates have prepared for weeks. Mr. DeSantis brought on a well-known debate coach, Mr. Pence has been holding practice sessions with mock lecterns in Indiana and Mr. Ramaswamy has been holding sessions with advisers on his private plane (Mr. Ramaswamy also posted a shirtless video of himself smashing tennis balls on Monday, calling it “three hours of solid debate prep”). Only Mr. Christie and Mr. Pence have previously participated in presidential-level debates, giving those two an advantage over less experienced rivals.Some of those onstage are nationally known, including Mr. Pence, who participated in two vice-presidential debates that were widely watched. But for Mr. Burgum and others, the event will be their national introduction and a chance to sell their biographies or bona fides, such as Mr. Hutchinson, a former congressman who has emerged as one of the party’s most vocal Trump critics.Breaking through the media attention surrounding the former president will require a viral moment — a surprise attack or notable defense — and the candidates have been reluctant to publicly signal their strategy. The release of memos from Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC last week was viewed as a significant tactical error that heightened the pressure on the Florida governor while limiting his avenues of attack.Some of Mr. Trump’s rivals have mocked him for skipping the debate, with Mr. Christie calling him a “coward.” Those taunts were unsuccessful in luring Mr. Trump in, though Mr. Christie has signaled his eagerness to swing at him in absentia.It is far from clear how much fire the rest of the field will focus on the missing front-runner, or whether they will skirmish among themselves in a bid to claim second place as his leading challenger.Mr. DeSantis’s aides have said they expect him to bear the brunt of attacks on Wednesday because he will be the leading candidate on the stage.Mr. Scott and his allies have aired a heavy rotation of advertising in Iowa and he has risen there to third place in some polling, including a Des Moines Register/NBC News survey this week. But those ads have not helped him catch Mr. DeSantis yet, let alone Mr. Trump.Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina before she served as ambassador under Mr. Trump, has sought to find middle ground, arguing that the party needs to move past the former president yet doing so without being overly critical of an administration she served in.Mr. Pence has searched for traction in a race where he has been typecast as a betrayer to Mr. Trump by some voters, for standing up to his bid to block certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. That confrontation has established Mr. Pence as a critical witness in one federal indictment against Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump, of course, is not giving up the spotlight entirely. He has recorded an interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, as counterprogramming to the network’s debate. And on Monday his lawyers agreed to a $200,000 bail ahead of his expected surrender to the authorities in Georgia later this week after he was charged as part of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election result there in 2020.The criminal indictment was Mr. Trump’s fourth of the year, though the accumulation of charges has done little to slow or stop his consolidation of support in polls so far. More

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      Ramaswamy’s Foreign Policy Approach Offers Rivals a Line of Attack

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      As Vivek Ramaswamy rises in the polls, fellow Republican presidential candidates are keying in on a number of policy pronouncements that veer far from the G.O.P. mainstream.Republican presidential rivals, looking to blunt Vivek Ramaswamy’s rise in national primary polls ahead of the first primary debate on Wednesday, have seized on the political arena where the upstart entrepreneur has strayed far afield from his party’s thinkers: foreign policy.Opponents have attacked Mr. Ramaswamy for his assertions that he would leave Taiwan to the Chinese once the United States has sufficiently expanded its domestic semiconductor industry and that he would allow Russia to keep parts of eastern Ukraine in order to entice President Vladimir V. Putin away from his military alliance with China. Most recently, he said he would curtail military aid to Israel after stabilizing the Middle East, perhaps the politically riskiest position yet.“This is part of a concerning pattern with Vivek,” Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations now running for the Republican presidential nomination, said Monday about Mr. Ramaswamy’s Israel comments. “Between abandoning Israel, abolishing the F.B.I., and giving Taiwan to China, his foreign policy proposals have a common theme: They make America less safe.”Candidates have also looked askance at peculiar statements Mr. Ramaswamy made this month suggesting a government cover-up behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; former Vice President Mike Pence said he was “deeply offended.”Mr. Ramaswamy, who has never held elected office or worked in government, expresses supreme confidence in his foreign policy views. He has cited as his models George F. Kennan, the architect of America’s Cold War global reach, and James A. Baker III, the American diplomat most credited for transitioning the world beyond the Cold War. He has vowed as president to go to Moscow the way Richard M. Nixon went to China.But in a political campaign, his positions may come off as naïve or bizarre — and easy to exploit. His tendency to answer any question posed to him has sent him down a rabbit hole of conspiratorial innuendo on Sept. 11. First, he told an interviewer, “I don’t believe the government has told us the truth” about the attacks. In a lengthy post on X, formerly known as Twitter, he subsequently explained that he was suggesting a deeper involvement in the attack by Saudi Arabia’s government.Then in an interview posted Monday in The Atlantic, he plunged deeper, asking, “how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers?”His rivals’ criticisms in some cases have disregarded the broader context of Mr. Ramaswamy’s statements. His pledge to pull back military aid to Israel, made last week in an interview with the actor Russell Brand on the video platform Rumble that’s popular on the right, were part of a larger conversation on expanding Israel’s bilateral peace agreements with its neighbors that would make military aid less necessary.But caveats and context are often sacrificed on the campaign trail, and Mr. Ramaswamy said on Monday that he expected further foreign policy attacks on the debate stage Wednesday night in Milwaukee.“I personally think we should spend a lot of time on it,” he said in an interview, “instead of rehashing pre-canned lines on who is more anti-woke.”Mr. Ramaswamy on Monday framed the blowback from his critics as hostility from “a broken foreign policy establishment that is sanctimoniously steeped in the disastrous mistakes of the last four decades.”But his proposals are pushing the envelope, even for a Republican Party increasingly dominated by isolationism, and open to conspiracy theories.Among those proposals are a quid-pro-quo offer to Mr. Putin: He would promise to block Ukraine from joining NATO and freeze the battle lines in Ukraine, with Russia controlling Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine, in exchange for a Putin break with China.Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and a fellow candidate for the Republican nomination, slammed that position from Ukraine in an interview with The Washington Post this month, calling it “a false choice” and “a ridiculous statement.”Even as Mr. Ramaswamy promises to isolate China, he told the conservative broadcaster Hugh Hewitt that the United States would continue to defend Taiwan through 2028, when a Ramaswamy administration will have rebuilt the domestic semiconductor industry. After that, Mr. Ramaswamy said, the U.S. commitment to Taiwan would change.“You are saying ‘I will go to war, including attacking the Chinese mainland, if you attack before semiconductor independence. And afterward, you can have Taiwan?’” Mr. Hewitt asked incredulously.“Well, Hugh, I’m running to be the next president, and so I expect to be the president inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025,” Mr. Ramaswamy answered. “So I’m wearing that hat when I’m choosing my words very carefully right now. And I’m being very clear: Xi Jinping should not mess with Taiwan until we have achieved semiconductor independence, until the end of my first term when I will lead us there,” he added, referring to the Chinese president.But his comments on Israel, in the hands of his rivals, could threaten his rising star, considering the centrality of Israel to many conservative voters, especially evangelical Christians. After Jewish and Israeli publications played up his comments on pulling back military aid, the conservative radio host Mark Levin responded on the social media platform X, “Not good. Awful, actually,” adding, “He threw Taiwan under the bus too.”In a lengthy response, released publicly as an open letter to the candidate, Matthew Brooks, the longtime chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said that “this is not the time for the U.S. to take an action that would be universally perceived by Israel’s enemies as a weakening of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”On Monday, Mr. Ramaswamy said he was “not surprised at the foreign policy establishment’s anaphylactic response to anyone who challenges the orthodoxy.”“Friends help friends stand on their own feet,” he said of his Israel policy.But for Republican rivals looking for a target who isn’t the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, Mr. Ramaswamy could be an inviting one. Polling averages put him in third place, and gaining on Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is in second. Other than Mr. Christie, Republican candidates have shied away from attacking Mr. Trump, convinced they will ultimately need the former president’s loyal followers.Foreign policy would be a safer line of attack against Mr. Ramaswamy than his domestic proposals, which align closely with Mr. Trump’s.“I’m not surprised they’re throwing the kitchen sink at me,” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “They’re threatened by my rise.” More

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      Pence Undercuts Trump’s Defense in Classified Documents Case

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      The former vice president said he knew of no broad order by Donald Trump that would have declassified documents the former president took with him when he left the White House.Former Vice President Mike Pence said on Sunday that he knew of no widespread declassification of documents by President Donald J. Trump when they were in the White House together, refuting one of the former president’s main defenses against charges of endangering national security.Mr. Trump, who has been indicted on 40 felony counts and accused of taking war plans and other secret documents with him when he left office and refusing to return many of them, has long insisted that he had issued a “standing order” to declassify papers and that any he brought home were automatically declassified.But his vice president became the latest former Trump administration official to say that he had heard of no such edict. “I was never made aware of any broad-based effort to declassify documents,” Mr. Pence said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.“There is a process that the White House goes through to declassify materials,” Mr. Pence added. “I’m aware of that occurring on several cases over the course of our four years. But I don’t have any knowledge of any broad-based directive from the president. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t occur; it’s just not something that I ever heard about.”Mr. Pence’s recollections square with those of other former White House officials. Mark Meadows, who was Mr. Trump’s last White House chief of staff, told investigators working for the special counsel Jack Smith that he did not recall the former president issuing such an order or even discussing it, ABC News reported on Sunday, citing unnamed sources.Eighteen former administration officials, including at least two of Mr. Meadows’s predecessors as chief of staff, John F. Kelly and Mick Mulvaney, previously told CNN that they knew of no such order either. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have not included the claim of such a declassification order in court papers, where they would be liable for making false assertions.Instead, Mr. Trump has made the claim only in public appearances, where there is no legal penalty for not telling the truth. Shortly after an F.B.I. search of his home at Mar-a-Lago in Florida last August turned up a trove of classified documents that he had taken and failed to return after being subpoenaed, Mr. Trump posted on social media that “it was all declassified.”That evening, he issued a statement read on Fox News saying that he “had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified.”During a subsequent interview with Sean Hannity on Fox, Mr. Trump said he did not need to follow any process to declassify documents. “You’re the president of the United States — you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it,” he said then.Referring to the documents found at Mar-a-Lago, he said, “In other words, when I left the White House, they were declassified.”Mr. Trump has maintained that assertion for months. During a CNN town hall in May, he said, “They become automatically declassified when I took them.”But the indictment filed by Mr. Smith in Federal District Court in Florida includes evidence that Mr. Trump was aware that the documents were not declassified. During a recorded July 2021 meeting with two people interviewing him on behalf of Mr. Meadows for the former aide’s memoir, Mr. Trump referred to attack plans against Iran and on the tape sounded as if he were holding it up to show them.“See, as president, I could have declassified it,” he told them. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”ABC News reported that it had reviewed an early draft of Mr. Meadows’s resulting memoir that described Mr. Trump having a classified war plan “on the couch” at his office in Bedminster, N.J., but that the reference was deleted by Mr. Meadows because it would be “problematic.”George Terwilliger, Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, declined to comment on ABC’s account.Mr. Pence, who is trailing in his campaign against Mr. Trump for the Republican presidential nomination next year, has been cautious about criticizing his former running mate, who has been indicted in four separate state and federal cases.But with the first Republican debate looming this week, Mr. Pence has been more willing lately to deride Mr. Trump’s reliance on “crackpot lawyers” in trying to overturn the 2020 election and for asking his vice president “to put him over the Constitution” by invalidating Electoral College votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.Asked on ABC on Sunday whether the president’s chief of staff would have known about any broad declassification order had it existed, Mr. Pence said, “I would expect so.”But he added: “But, look, President Trump is entitled to a presumption of innocence. He’s entitled to his day in court. And I’m just not going to comment on the latest leak or the latest reporting coming out of that process.”Jonathan Swan More

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      Trump Wasn’t Invited to This Georgia Event, but His Presence Was Still Felt

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      Although the Republican front-runner was absent at a conservative conference where other candidates were in attendance, he was still top of mind.The two-day Republican gathering in Atlanta was supposed to be something of a Trump-free zone.The host, the conservative commentator Erick Erickson, did not include former President Donald J. Trump in the confab, and instead conducted 45-minute “fireside chat” interviews with six of his rivals for the Republican nomination. He told the crowd on Friday that Mr. Trump, and the criminal indictment handed down against him on Monday just 10 miles away, would not be a topic of discussion.“We’ve got six presidential candidates — two governors, two senators, two members of Congress,” said Mr. Erickson, who is based in Georgia. “I want to ask them about policy questions.”But even as the featured politicians tried to make their own cases without mentioning the former president, also the party’s current front-runner for 2024, his influence — and stranglehold over the Republican primary race — was palpable.Former Vice President Mike Pence sidestepped a question about how he would close the polling gap with Mr. Trump. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who served as United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, thinly complimented the former president even as she explained why she was running against her former boss. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s closest rival, said he hoped that the party would focus more on the future than “some of the other static that is out there.”On and offstage, participants and attendees alike said they believed that defeating President Biden would not be possible as long as the party repeated Mr. Trump’s assertions that the 2020 election was stolen.Georgia will play a pivotal role in the outcome of the general election, both because of recent election outcomes and because the state has the jurisdiction in the most recent Trump indictment. It’s why current and former state officials have been vocal about their belief that having Mr. Trump at the top of the ticket risks delivering a message that is more focused on 2020 election denialism than policy — one that could hurt their chances of winning in the key battleground state.“It should be such an easy path for us to win the White House back,” said Gov. Brian Kemp, one of the few figures who was asked about and who directly addressed Mr. Trump. “We have to be focused on the future, not something that happened three years ago.”Mr. Trump is expected to skip the first Republican debate next week and post an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that night instead. He still has a solid, double-digit lead over his rivals, according to recent state and national polls. At the weekend event, themed “Forward: Which Way,” attendees saw a chance to hear voices other than Mr. Trump’s. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is in single digits in most national polls, vowed to give governors more power in federal decisions and stayed true to his positive, faith-based message. Mr. DeSantis gave highlights from his family’s recent campaign trip to the Iowa State Fair while emphasizing the policies he has passed in Florida. Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and author who has received attention recently from voters and rivals alike, spoke of a “revolution” in changing how the federal government operates.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Mr. Trump’s most vocal critic, largely avoided mention of the former president but later railed against him to reporters outside the event, calling him “a coward” for not joining the debate on Wednesday, adding, “He’s afraid of me, and he’s afraid of defending his record.”While many in the crowd expressed frustration over Mr. Trump’s legal troubles, they also said that Monday’s indictment was little more than a politically motivated sideshow that distracted from larger policy issues.Electing a candidate who can defeat Mr. Biden in the general election remained their chief objective — one that many attendees said would be challenging if Mr. Trump’s campaign message focused more on his 2020 grievances instead of policy.“Honestly, we need a new generation,” said Lyn Murphy, a Republican activist who attended Friday’s gathering. “We’ve got a great bench.”Bill Coons, 58, who identified himself as a political independent who voted for a third-party candidate in 2016 and supported Mr. Trump in 2020, said he probably would not support Mr. Trump if he became the party’s nominee.“Why talk about the past when you’ve got a future to move towards?” he said. “The future of this nation is dire if Biden is re-elected, in my opinion.”Although Georgia has long been a Republican stronghold, voters there chose Mr. Biden in 2020, making him the first Democrat in nearly 30 years to win the state. It also sent Democrats to the U.S. Senate in two 2021 runoff races, and re-elected Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in 2022 for a full term. When asked about her role in the Trump administration, Ms. Haley called Mr. Trump “the right president at the right time.”But “at the end of the day, we have to win in November,” she said. “And it is time to put that negativity and that drama behind us.” More

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      Pence Leans Into Civility Politics at Iowa State Fair

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      Looking to contrast himself with former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — leading rivals in the race for the Republican nomination who converged on Iowa on Saturday — former Vice President Mike Pence made a play for civility politics during a round table with about two dozen Christian college and university presidents.When Mr. Pence arrived at the event in Ankeny, Iowa, Mary Jo Brown, 67, told the former vice president that he was “a man of integrity.”A former teacher at Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary, a private Christian school, Ms. Brown said in an interview that Mr. Pence’s faith had guided his decision-making on Jan. 6 and that she would support him “if he can get through.”Mr. Pence is polling at a distant sixth place in Iowa, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, far behind contenders like Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, who are commanding attention in Iowa this weekend with their brasher style of politicking.Since the latest indictment against Mr. Trump came down, which revealed that Mr. Pence had provided prosecutors with “contemporaneous notes” regarding the former president’s efforts to reverse his 2020 loss, Mr. Pence has been emphasizing his loyalty to the Constitution — and invoking his faith as he tries to win the support of the evangelical voters he is counting on to propel him in the 2024 primary.But polling shows that Mr. Pence has the same 3 percent support among white evangelicals in Iowa that he has among the larger field of Republican caucusgoers.On Saturday, Mr. Pence cast himself as a key figure in the appointment of three conservatives to the Supreme Court by Mr. Trump, telling the Christian education leaders that he had interviewed each justice — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — as vice president.“You can have confidence that we have a pro-religious majority on the Supreme Court,” he said.Mr. Pence also shared an anecdote at the event about being invited in 2010 to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., by his then-House colleague John Lewis to commemorate Bloody Sunday.Noting their political differences, he called the civil rights leader, who died in July 2020, a “great man” and said that they had a mutual respect for each other as men of faith. That’s a stark contrast from how Mr. Trump played down Mr. Lewis’s accomplishments after his death.“He didn’t come to my inauguration,” Mr. Trump said at the time. More

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      At Iowa State Fair, Kim Reynolds Gives 2024 Republicans a Safe Space

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      Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa did not ask former Vice President Mike Pence about Donald J. Trump’s indictments, the topic about which he is most often grilled on the campaign trail. Nor did she ask him if his life had changed “since Tucker Carlson ruined your career,” as one voter shouted during his appearance at the political soapbox Thursday.Instead, the popular Republican governor struck a different tone on Friday morning, asking the former vice president what she called the “fast three”: his funniest moment on the trail, his favorite food at the fair and his favorite walkout song.At the Des Moines Register’s soapbox, a longtime fixture at the fair, candidates have 20 minutes to make their pitch to a discerning crowd of voters who relish the retail politicking that is crucial to winning Iowa. Presidential hopefuls come to the fair with the goal of avoiding awkward moments and on-the-fly responses to audience questions.But Ms. Reynolds’s new “fair-side” chats are shaping up to be more of a safe space, where the 2024 Republican field has so far answered softball questions tailored to their platforms, allowing them to speak about proposed policies at length with little follow-up.The Iowa governor also seems to have mastered the art of helping the candidates while boosting her own brand, leveling criticism at the Biden administration while promoting her legislative successes in the state between their responses.This friendly atmosphere may be why Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina are skipping the soapbox altogether, in favor of conversations with Ms. Reynolds on Saturday and Tuesday.Ms. Reynolds’ questions so far have focused on candidates’ successes in their respective offices, how to curb what she called the Biden administration’s “ridiculous” economic policies and how they plan to win the nomination.But she has also served to humanize the contenders. She laughed off accidentally introducing Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota as the governor of North Carolina. She equated “Miami nice” to “Iowa nice” with Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami. And with Mr. Pence, she joked about her husband’s likeness to the former vice president.“I can say with confidence, he’s a very handsome man,” Mr. Pence said. “I agree,” Ms. Reynolds responded. More