The absence of Donald Trump played a central role in the second Republican primary debate of the 2024 election season, as seven White House hopefuls tried and mostly failed to shake up a race in which the former president remains the clear frontrunner.
Two of Trump’s rivals attempted to capitalize on his absence by criticizing him for skipping the debate, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute in Simi Valley, California. DeSantis mocked Trump as “missing in action”, saying, “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record.”
Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, suggested Trump was skipping the debates out of fear of facing voters. Addressing Trump in a straight-to-camera diatribe, Christie said, “You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on this stage and defending your record. You’re ducking these things.”
Trump skipped the event – as he skipped last month’s debate, and reportedly plans to skip the next – and instead held a rally in Michigan, where autoworkers have gone on strike to demand pay increases. A day earlier, Joe Biden joined some of the striking workers on the picket line, providing an odd preview of the likely matchup in the 2024 general election.
In the final question of the night, the moderators of the Fox Business and Univision debate forced the candidates to reckon with reality. Fox News host Dana Perino asked, “What is your mathematical path, Governor DeSantis, in order to try to beat President Trump, who has a commanding and enduring lead in this race?”
DeSantis replied, “Polls don’t elect presidents. Voters elect presidents. And we’re going to take the case to the people in these early [voting] states.”
But those voters do not yet appear to be swayed by any of the candidates who appeared onstage on Wednesday night. Even as Trump faces 91 felony charges across four criminal cases, Republican primary candidates have struggled to put a dent in the former president’s significant polling lead. 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 entered the second debate looking for 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 him dropping to fifth place in the second voting state.
With their primary hopes dwindling, the debate participants shouted over each other in an attempt to be heard, allowing the discussion to devolve into incomprehensible crosstalk.
In an apparent effort to get voters’ attention, some debate participants offered eyebrow-raising suggestions on the issues of gun violence, race and immigration. The former vice-president, Mike Pence, called for the passage of “a federal, expedited death penalty for anyone involved in a mass shooting so that they will meet their fate in months, not years”. It is unclear how such a policy might prevent mass shootings, especially given that the perpetrators of such crimes often die by suicide or are killed by law enforcement before they are prosecuted.
In another surprising moment, South Carolina senator Tim Scott, who is Black, implied that slavery had been more bearable for Black Americans than the Great Society, President Lyndon Johnson’s anti-poverty program that birthed social welfare programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
“Black families survived slavery. We survived poll taxes and literacy tests. We survived discrimination being woven into the laws of our country,” Scott said. “What was hard to survive was Johnson’s Great Society … where they decided to take the Black father out of the household to get a check in the mail.”
A theme from the first primary debate played out again on Wednesday, as former UN ambassador Nikki Haley sparred with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Criticizing Ramaswamy for joining TikTok despite the app’s potential security vulnerabilities, Haley landed the most stinging insult of the night.
“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” Haley told Ramaswamy.
But it remained unclear how the debate might help candidates break through in a race that has grown static, as Trump’s rivals jockey for a distant second place. With less than four months left before 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.
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 set by the Republican National Committee, but he insisted he would keep fighting for the nomination. 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 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.”
