Presidential Election of 2024

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      Who Won the Debate?

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      Commentators largely agreed that little seemed to alter the state of a race in which Donald J. Trump appears the runaway favorite.The first Republican debate on Wednesday night offered political pundits a bit of a thought experiment: If the clear front-runner doesn’t take part, can the debate have a clear winner?Even as commentators spent the debate and its aftermath arguing over which of the eight underdogs on the debate stage performed best, they largely agreed that little seemed to alter the state of a race in which Donald J. Trump appears the runaway favorite.Still, some pundits said that Mr. Trump’s absence did offer candidates the chance to differentiate themselves, an opportunity they may not have had if he had participated. And the battle to become Mr. Trump’s top challenger, some said, is more hazy. Here is a sampling of commentary on how the candidates fared.Ron DeSantisGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in some ways entered Wednesday’s debate with the most to prove and the most to lose. While he has long been viewed as Mr. Trump’s strongest potential challenger, his campaign has stumbled in recent weeks amid fund-raising trouble and staffing changes.But while Mr. DeSantis may have seemed like the apparent leader among this group of hopefuls, political pundits noted that he largely evaded the serious criticism or attacks that rivals usually level at would-be front-runners.Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, said during the debate that he expected Mr. DeSantis to “deal with constant incoming” attacks. By the end, Mr. Lowry said that Mr. DeSantis had “helped himself” by sticking to his message — and took “no incoming fire.”Other observers noted Mr. DeSantis’s ability to stay in comfortable territory, trumpeting his conservative track record in Florida as proof that he could steer the Republican Party to success.Mary Katharine Ham, a journalist and conservative commentator, called Mr. DeSantis’s strategy “effective.”“Gimme a topic. Yeah, I did that thing. Let me tell you what I did. It happened in Florida. Results,” she said, summarizing his approach.Still, some wondered whether the lack of attacks against Mr. DeSantis heralded a new phase in the race.“Ron DeSantis was the leading candidate — still is the leading candidate — on that stage tonight,” Jen Psaki, a former press secretary for President Biden, said on MSNBC. “And they basically ignored him.”Vivek RamaswamyVivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur with no government experience, was the center of a number of contentious debate exchanges, seeming to enjoy being attacked as much as he appeared to relish going after experienced candidates over their records. But whether his scrappy, off-the-cuff sparring style helped him was a matter of disagreement.Ms. Psaki said that Mr. Ramaswamy might appeal to voters by coming off as among the most unscripted of the bunch. He has “a little life in him, he talks like a human being, he says what he thinks and he pushes back on other people,” she observed.David Urban, a Republican lobbyist who advised Mr. Trump in 2016, said on CNN that Mr. Ramaswamy’s visibility made him a “big winner.”But on the flip side, some suggested that voters might find his aggressiveness off-putting.“I think Vivek coming out and just taking on everyone on that stage, that is pretty gutsy,” Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host, said. “I mean, maybe some people were annoyed by it,” she added, “but I thought it was pretty gutsy.”Nikki HaleyMr. Ramaswamy’s approach also helped call attention to some of his more established rivals, particularly Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump.Though Ms. Haley’s campaign has so far struggled to gain traction, many political observers said that she stood out on the debate stage by presenting herself as a voice of reason, particularly when she battled with Mr. Ramaswamy over his views on foreign policy.“He wants to hand Ukraine to Russia, let China eat Taiwan, stopped funding Israel,” Ms. Haley said. “You don’t do that to friends.”Her comments drew notice. Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former communications director for Mr. Trump, said on CNN that Ms Haley “really took Vivek to the woodshed.”Others noted that Ms. Haley, the only woman on the debate stage, spoke with authority on abortion, when she accused other candidates of being impractical and ignoring the effect their rhetoric might have on women.“I think Nikki is going to get a second look from some people based on some stuff she said tonight on abortion,” Kellyanne Conway, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, said on Fox News. “I’m very pro-life, but I like what she said — that you don’t demonize or punish women. That’s important.”Donald TrumpThe largest question looming over Wednesday’s debate was whether Mr. Trump’s absence would be a misfire that might allow another candidate to claim the spotlight and generate more support.By and large, political experts, even those who don’t have favorable views of Mr. Trump, agreed that was not the case.Amy Walter, the publisher and editor in chief of The Cook Political Report, offered a stark assessment, saying that “Trump has to be pretty happy with this debate.” She suggested that none of the candidates “made their case” to voters open to other options.Speaking on CNN, David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, said that Mr. Trump “won big” after the debate, with “no one emerging as his principal opponent.”Brendan Buck, a G.O.P. political strategist critical of Mr. Trump, said that “perhaps the biggest failure here tonight is nothing was done to make Donald Trump feel like he needs to participate in the next debate.”For Rob Godfrey, a longtime Republican strategist based in South Carolina, Mr. Trump’s absence was a missed opportunity to dismiss his political rivals.“There is no reason to believe he couldn’t have pulled off the same standup comedy routine he used to dominate every primary debate eight years ago,” Mr. Godfrey said in an interview.Anjali Huynh More

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      Trump, During Tucker Carlson Interview, Belittles Republican Rivals

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      Instead of being subjected to the rigors of a debate, former President Donald J. Trump enjoyed an hour on Wednesday night in which he was able to deliver mostly stream-of-consciousness commentary on politics and the state of the nation, drifting from topics such as the death of Jeffrey Epstein and the challenges of low water pressure to what President Biden’s legs look like on the beach and what he called the “trivia” of the charges lodged against him in four criminal indictments.His decision to sit out the debate and instead do a pretaped interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was a tactical one by Mr. Trump, who is leading the Republican primary polls by wide margins. Rather than appearing onstage with people competing with him but largely refusing to criticize him, Mr. Trump was able to use the leading and sympathetic questioning by Mr. Carlson to boast about what he saw as his accomplishments, belittle his rivals and attack President Biden in an unchallenged format.Early in the 46-minute episode of Mr. Carlson’s show, posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Mr. Carlson asked Mr. Trump why he chose not to join the other candidates at the first primary debate of the election cycle, hosted by Fox News. Mr. Trump replied by attacking Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, and Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and Mr. Trump’s onetime friend, whom he called a “savage maniac.”Mr. Trump maintained that authoritarians around the globe were afraid of tangling with him. He again described the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021, as having a spirit of “love” and “unity.”Mr. Carlson, who raised the topic of Mr. Epstein, asked more than once whether Mr. Trump might be killed by his opponents — Mr. Trump did not answer directly — and pressed Mr. Trump about whether the United States was in danger of falling into civil war.“I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen. There’s a level of hatred that I’ve never seen and that’s probably a bad combination.”Asked how he was enduring the four indictments he has faced since March, Mr. Trump responded, “I do get credit for holding up quite well, I must tell you.” More

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      Pence Clashes With Ramaswamy: ‘We Don’t Need to Bring in a Rookie’

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      Vivek Ramaswamy wants voters to know he’s young, vigorous — and did he mention young?“You’re a blank slate — you’re 38 years old,” Mr. Ramaswamy, the first Republican millennial presidential candidate, imagined a viewer as saying about him. And, he added, “Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name?” — a reference to the former political wunderkind Barack Obama, which former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey quickly pointed out, adding, “I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same kind of amateur.”But Mr. Ramaswamy made it clear that he wasn’t going to be deferential to the more experienced candidates onstage. He addressed former vice president Mike Pence as “Mike,” familiarly, and didn’t back down when Mr. Pence declared, “We don’t need to bring in a rookie.” Instead, he made his newcomer status a combative rallying cry.“I’m the only person on the stage who isn’t bought and paid for, so I can say this,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in response to a question about climate change policy. Even more pointedly, he referred to his young children and suggested that voters needed to “hand it over to a new generation to actually fix the problem.”This all came after debate preparation that included releasing videos of himself playing tennis shirtless — he has said, in a pointed reminder of his young legs, that he likes to hit with college players around the country while on the trail — and doing burpees to T.I.’s “Bring ’Em Out,” a party hit from 2004, when Mr. Ramaswamy was just an Eminem-impersonating underclassman at Harvard.His emphasis on his youth recalls the candidacy of Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who preceded him by one election cycle and a few years at Harvard.Mr. Ramaswamy’s views are largely out of step with his own generation and the one below him, which skew Democratic. But, said Charlotte Alter, the author of “The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America”: “The only way the G.O.P. is attracting any young voters is on culture war issues like anti-woke posturing and contrarian hot takes. And that’s where Vivek has planted his flag.” More

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      ‘Rich Men North of Richmond,’ Viral Country Song, Gets Debate Mention

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      The star of the first few minutes of the Republican debate on Wednesday was not a candidate, not a moderator and not a notable moment from the crowd.It was a song.To frame their first few questions, the Fox News moderators played a few lyrics from “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a folksy ballad about a narrator who is “working all day” while rich elites in Washington — an hour north of Richmond — keep him stuck in place.“It is by a singer from Farmville, Va., named Oliver Anthony — his lyrics speak of alienation, of deep frustration with the state of government and of this country,” Martha MacCallum, one of the moderators, said before asking, “So, Governor DeSantis, why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now?”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida seized on the relatively benign question with what amounted to an opening statement contrasting his economic record with President Biden’s.“We also cannot succeed when the Congress spends trillions and trillions of dollars,” Mr. DeSantis said. “Those rich men north of Richmond have put us in this situation.”The song made an unusual and sudden leap straight to No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart this week, fueled in part by influential conservative pundits and media figures.It quickly struck a chord with Republicans. Its relatively unpolished music video, with Mr. Anthony singing into a lone microphone with a resonator acoustic guitar, racked up 36 million views.While it is not overtly political, the song’s lyrics appeal to conservatives in language and theme, and it is quickly becoming an anthem for Republicans as it takes aim at policies related to climate change and the social safety net.“I wish politicians would look out for miners,” Mr. Anthony sings, “and not just minors on an island somewhere. Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat, and the obese milkin’ welfare.”Mr. Anthony has tried to stay out of the political fray surrounding his song.“I sit pretty dead center down the aisle on politics and always have,” he said in an introductory video posted to YouTube this month. More

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      DeSantis’s Debate Mission: Prove He’s the Top Trump Alternative

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      The Florida governor was livid after his allies’ debate strategy memo was revealed online. He enters tonight’s debate looking to reclaim lost ground.Follow live updates on the first Republican presidential primary debate.Ron DeSantis was livid.The super PAC supporting him had posted a trove of sensitive material, including strategic advice and research on his rivals, only days before the first debate of the 2024 campaign. The advice was, at times, so basic that it could come off as condescending: reminding the Florida governor to talk about his family, for instance, and prescribing how many times he should attack President Biden and the news media.Mr. DeSantis erupted over the revelation, according to people told of his reaction, even though the posting of the documents online was meant to avoid running afoul of campaign finance rules. The advice memo, pilloried as “amateurish” within his extended orbit, was quickly taken down, along with the other documents, but the damage had been done. If he followed the advice laid out — including which rivals to hit — he would look like a puppet.Campaigning over the weekend, Mr. DeSantis distanced himself from the memo. “I didn’t do it,” he said. “I didn’t read it. It’s not going to influence what I do.”The episode was a self-inflicted wound by the broader DeSantis team that capped two months of difficulties for the Florida governor that have included dropping poll numbers, a new campaign manager and staff cutbacks. Now, Mr. DeSantis heads into Wednesday night’s event in Milwaukee looking to reclaim lost ground and avoid losing more, knowing that he is almost certain to be a major target for his rivals without Donald J. Trump on the stage.It’s been clear for weeks that the debate would be a critical juncture; to prepare, Mr. DeSantis brought on a top Republican debate coach, Brett O’Donnell. But in some ways, a number of Republicans said, Mr. DeSantis is less in need of a breakout moment than of a stabilizing performance. Allies believe his top priority is to reassure skittish donors and supporters that he has the mettle to square off against Mr. Trump.“This is a big moment for him, but he’s going to rise to it,” predicted Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, one of a few House Republicans backing Mr. DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis has displayed some resiliency. Polls show that after months of attacks from Mr. Trump and weeks of unflattering headlines about campaign upheaval, many Republican voters still like Mr. DeSantis. He had the highest favorability rating of any Republican in this week’s Des Moines Register/NBC News poll in Iowa, even as he trailed Mr. Trump by 42 percent to 19 percent.But his standing in the multicandidate race has slipped, with other candidates such as Vivek Ramaswamy and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey appearing to make inroads in the race for second place.“When he got in the race, he had the first license to be the alternative to Trump,” Brad Todd, a longtime Republican strategist, said of Mr. DeSantis. “But it was a license that had an expiration date, and I think that’s probably due.”“It’s really his title to keep,” Mr. Todd added, but “it’s not a foregone conclusion he keeps it.”Whether Mr. DeSantis can convert those favorable views into votes remains to be seen.Advisers say Mr. DeSantis is focused on winning the nomination on the ground in Iowa and the other early states, outworking Mr. Trump and leveraging his well-funded super PAC to out-organize his rivals. But if the national perception of his candidacy does not improve, that task becomes significantly harder.Publication of the debate-prep documents further sowed mistrust between Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and the super PAC, which he seeded with $82.5 million left over from his 2022 re-election. The anger is so palpable that one person who has advised the DeSantis campaign said the super PAC memo “almost seemed intentionally unhelpful.”One line in the memo seemed to sting most: the suggestion that Mr. DeSantis defend Mr. Trump and bludgeon Mr. Chris Christie by accusing him of angling to become an MSNBC host with his frequent broadsides against the former president.That is because Mr. DeSantis, who had been traveling to events in Iowa and New Hampshire organized by his super PAC and interacting with members of the group’s staff, had already been testing out a version of just such a line with various people in private, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.The dynamics of a Trump-less debate stage on Wednesday are hard to predict. But the DeSantis campaign expects the governor to be the “center of attacks,” according to a guidance that his new campaign manager, James Uthmeier, issued in a memo to donors and allies over the weekend.“We all know why our competitors have to go down this road: because this is a two-man race for the Republican nomination between Governor DeSantis and Donald Trump,” Mr. Uthmeier wrote.But the description of the G.O.P. contest as a “two-man race” seems outdated, as Mr. DeSantis’s rivals have drawn far closer to him in many polls than he is to Mr. Trump. The super PAC memo advised the governor to take a “sledgehammer” to one rival, Mr. Ramaswamy, who has been climbing in some surveys.Mr. Massie, who dismissed the memo as “not the smartest move,” said that Mr. Ramaswamy was more of a “curiosity” than a serious candidate.“There is no way in hell people are going to elect someone as president — or to either party’s nomination — who they only found out about six months ago,” Mr. Massie said.A spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy, Tricia McLaughlin, responded by mocking Mr. DeSantis for urging Republican voters not to be “listless vessels” who blindly support Mr. Trump.“Counter to what some candidates onstage say, we believe the American people are more than just listless vessels,” she said.One Republican aligned with a rival to Mr. DeSantis described Mr. Ramaswamy, who has repeatedly come to Mr. Trump’s defense, as a wild card in the debate.Much will depend on the questions the moderators ask of the candidates, and whether they try to steer the conversation to a referendum on Mr. Trump in absentia, forcing the candidates to talk about him.Mr. Massie said that Mr. Trump’s absence would allow Mr. DeSantis to take unanswered “clean shots” at the former president’s record, and to assert his right to rebuttals when attacked by rivals, soaking up airtime.“He’s got to be careful, I think, not to criticize the man, Trump,” Mr. Massie said. “Policy is Ron’s path to victory.”Indeed, while Republican politics is rife with prognosticators saying that the way to beat Mr. Trump is to attack him, Mr. Christie has been doing just that for weeks, gaining in New Hampshire but not in national polls. Neither strategy to beat Mr. Trump — holding him close or a frontal assault — has proved surefire in the months before Labor Day, when the campaign season begins in earnest.The race is “wide open” for the eight candidates onstage, said Henry Barbour, a longtime Republican National Committee member. But, he added, “it has to be a one-on-one race.”If there’s more than one candidate not named Trump still in the race after the South Carolina primary, the fourth G.O.P. nominating contest, which is set for Feb. 24, 2024, Mr. Barbour said, “it’s almost a given that Donald Trump will have an insurmountable lead by the middle of March” in the all-important delegate chase.With Mr. Trump missing, Mr. Todd, the G.O.P. strategist, said the debate had the potential to feel like an undercard ahead of a later marquee matchup.“The debate in some ways will perform like a semifinal,” Mr. Todd said, with the goal being to advance to the next round. “Everyone knows Trump is in the finals. This is about who will be in the finals with him.” More

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      Who Are Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the Debate Moderators?

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      The role of debate moderator carries prestige, but it also brings exacting demands and inherent risks: personal attacks by candidates, grievances about perceived biases and, for the two moderators of Wednesday’s Republican primary debate, a tempestuous cable news network’s reputation.Enter Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the Fox News Channel mainstays who drew that assignment and will pose questions to the eight G.O.P. presidential candidates squaring off for the first time, absent former President Donald J. Trump.The party’s front-runner, Mr. Trump will bypass the debate in favor of an online interview with Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News in April.But that doesn’t mean the debate’s moderators will be under any less of a microscope.Here’s a closer look at who they are:Bret BaierHe is the chief political anchor for Fox News and the host of “Special Report With Bret Baier” at 6 p.m. on weeknights. Mr. Baier, 53, joined the network in 1998, two years after the network debuted, according to his biography.Mr. Baier, like Ms. MacCallum, is no stranger to the debate spotlight.In 2016, he moderated three G.O.P. primary debates for Fox, alongside Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace, who have since left the network. He was present when Ms. Kelly grilled Mr. Trump about his treatment of women during a 2015 debate, an exchange that drew Mr. Trump’s ire and led him to boycott the network’s next debate nearly six months later.During the 2012 presidential race, Mr. Baier moderated five Republican primary debates.At a network dominated by conservative commentators like Sean Hannity and the departed Mr. Carlson and Bill O’Reilly, Mr. Baier has generally avoided controversy — but not entirely.After Fox News called Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. on election night in 2020, becoming the first major news network to do so and enraging Mr. Trump and his supporters, Mr. Baier suggested in an email to network executives the next morning that the outlet should reverse its projection.“It’s hurting us,” he wrote in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times.Mr. Baier was also part of a witness list in the defamation lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems brought against Fox News over the network’s role in spreading disinformation about the company’s voting equipment. Fox settled the case for $787.5 million before it went to trial.Martha MacCallumShe is the anchor and executive editor of “The Story With Martha MacCallum” at 3 p.m. on weekdays. Ms. MacCallum, 59, joined the network in 2004, according to her biography.During the 2016 election, Ms. MacCallum moderated a Fox News forum for the bottom seven Republican presidential contenders who had not qualified for the party’s first debate in August 2015. She reprised that role in January 2016, just days before the Iowa caucuses.She and Mr. Baier also moderated a series of town halls with individual Democratic candidates during the 2020 election, including one that featured Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.Before joining Fox, she worked for NBC and CNBC.When Fox projected Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump in Arizona, effectively indicating that Mr. Biden had clinched the presidency, Ms. MacCallum was similarly drawn into the maelstrom at the network.During a Zoom meeting with network executives and Mr. Baier, she suggested it was not enough to call states based on numerical calculations — the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations — but that viewers’ reactions should be considered.“In a Trump environment,” Ms. MacCallum said, according to a review of the phone call by The Times, “the game is just very, very different.” More

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      What Are the Rules for the Republican Debate?

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      The first debate of the 2024 Republican presidential primary, hosted by Fox News, is set to kick off in Milwaukee on Wednesday at 9 p.m. Eastern time. It’s expected to last two hours.In contrast to many debates, the candidates will not make opening statements, though they will have 45 seconds each for closing statements. They will have one minute to answer each question and 30 seconds for follow-ups.The debate will be moderated by the Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, and will include eight candidates: Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, former Vice President Mike Pence, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. Former President Donald J. Trump has chosen not to participate.To qualify, candidates had to meet polling and donor criteria set by the Republican National Committee and also sign a pledge to support the Republican nominee, no matter who it is. More

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      Trump Won’t Debate, But He’s Still in the Spotlight With Tucker Interview

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      Former President Donald J. Trump will not be on the debate stage in Milwaukee on Wednesday night. Instead, he will be at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and aides have not said if he will be watching.But voters will still have a chance to hear from him, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who posts episodes of a show on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.The interview was recorded at some point in the last two weeks at Mr. Trump’s club, a person briefed on the matter said. The interview is expected to be posted around the time the debate — the first of the Republican primary season — begins.Both Mr. Carlson and Mr. Trump have been feuding with Fox News, which is hosting the debate.Mr. Carlson was pushed from his popular 8 p.m. show by officials at the network, and is still being paid the remainder of his contract.Mr. Trump, who has a wide lead in early polling, has complained bitterly about the network’s coverage for many months, and has suggested he may not participate in any debates. But that’s especially true for Wednesday and the second debate, which will be hosted by Fox Business.Mr. Trump is also likely to draw attention away from day-after coverage of the debate on Thursday, albeit for reasons less welcome to him: He is expected to travel to Georgia to be booked on the racketeering charges he faces there stemming from his efforts to remain in power after his 2020 election loss. More