The first 2024 Republican presidential debate is in the books. Here’s what happened

MILWAUKEE — The first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle has begun.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, anti-woke activist Vivek Ramaswamy, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum took the stage Wednesday night for the Fox News event.

Here’s what’s happening on the debate stage:

— After recent campaign stumbles, DeSantis was expected to have to defend himself and project likeability on the debate stage — but he had done relatively little of either as the two-hour broadcast neared its end. Instead, he seemed to take a back seat to more vocal candidates, speaking significantly less than Ramaswamy, his closest GOP competitor besides Trump in recent polls.

Ramaswamy garnered both massive applause and barbs from competitors on stage on topics from foreign policy to climate change.

— In the second half of the night, DeSantis was given the first chance to answer a question about education, one of the topics he campaigns on most passionately.

He responded with ease, citing Florida legislation to remove mentions of gender identity and so-called critical race theory in the classroom.

But Ramaswamy was quick on his tail. The novice candidate pleased the crowd with calls to “shut down the head of the snake, the Department of Education,” end teachers unions, and require civics tests to graduate high school.

— Is the truth really out there? There was a UFO question posed near the end of the GOP debate. Christie was asked if he would “level” with the American people about what was known about what was “out there.”

Christie took mock offense, saying he’d been asked that because he was from New Jersey and that his home state is “different but not that different.” He didn’t otherwise take the bait, saying those on stage had better things to talk about.

— When asked who would not support more funding to Ukraine, the only candidate to raise their hand was Ramaswamy.

“I think this is disastrous that we are protecting against an invasion across somebody else’s border when we should be using those same military resources to prevent the invasion of our own southern border here in the United States,” Ramaswamy said, drawing cheers from the crowd.

Ramaswamy also took a swipe at his fellow Republicans, including Christie and Pence, who have met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“I find it offensive that we have professional politicians on the stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kyiv to their Pope Zelenskyy without doing the same thing for people in Maui or the South Side of Chicago or Kensington,” Ramaswamy said. “I think we have to put the interests of Americans first, secure our own border instead of somebody else’s.”

This prompted a rebuke from Pence: “Anybody that thinks that we can’t solve the problems here in the United States and be the leader of the free world has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on earth.”

— At the center of the stage, and at the center of the hottest exchanges in the first part of the debate, was a 38-year-old novice candidate and technology entrepreneur named Vivek Ramaswamy.

Though he’s well behind Trump, Ramaswamy has crept up in recent polls, leading to his position next to DeSantis at center stage. And he quickly showed why when he showcased his ready-for-video, on-message approach, talking about how his poor parents moved to the U.S. and he had the ability to found billion-dollar companies.

Then Ramaswamy tried to show he wasn’t a regular politician and started to throw elbows. At one point he declared, “I’m the only person on the stage who isn’t bought and paid for.” He slammed his rivals as “super PAC puppets” who were using “readymade, pre-prepared slogans” to attack him.

He seemed to be betting that primary voters preferred something memorable said to something done. His rivals were having none of it.

— Candidates agreed Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6.

DeSantis didn’t immediately answer the question, saying, “We’ve got to look forward.” Under pressure from both Pence and the moderators, DeSantis ultimately said, “Mike did his duty. I’ve got no beef with him,” prompting Pence to reply, “I’m relieved.”

— Donald Trump skipped the Republican presidential debate to instead lean into his bogus claims about the 2020 election in a conspiracy-dabbled interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

The former president praised the crowd he spoke to on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, saying, “There was love in that crowd. There was love and unity.”

Trump also did not dismiss a suggestion from Carlson about whether his political opponents might choose violence or threaten his life and called the four criminal cases he faces “nonsense.”

— Six of eight candidates say they’d fully support Trump as the GOP nominee. Nearly an hour into the debate, Fox News Channel showed a live image of Atlanta’s Fulton County jail, where the former president is set to surrender on charges on Thursday, drawing boos from the audience. The moderators said they’d spend a “brief moment about the elephant not in the room” and ask about the cases against Trump.

Those on stage were then asked to raise their hands if they would support Trump if he wins the GOP presidential nomination. Six of the candidates raised their hands, while Christie half-raised his hand and Hutchinson kept his hand down.

The candidates on stage were required to sign a pledge vowing to support the eventual nominee before joining Wednesday’s debate.

— All of the candidates on Wednesday night’s debate stage say they oppose abortion, but their differences on where lines should be drawn became evident on stage.

Haley — the only woman in the GOP race — says there’s a need for “consensus” over abortion, noting that she feels it unlikely that a federal ban would pass until there are 60 senators who would support it. Haley, who often cities her own fertility struggles and the fact that her husband is adopted, says America needs to “humanize the issue and stop demonizing” it.

Pence challenged her position, saying that “consensus is the opposite of leadership” on the issue. Pence is the only major candidate who has said he supports a federal ban on abortion at six weeks, before many women know they’re pregnant. In an interview with The Associated Press, Pence went even further, saying abortion should be banned even when a pregnancy isn’t viable

DeSantis, who signed a six-week abortion ban into law, said “you’ve got to do what you think is right” when asked what he felt about potential criticism that such a narrow restriction could possibly harm GOP candidates in a general election.

— Christie accused lashed out at Ramaswamy during a discussion on climate change, accusing the outsider candidate of sounding like an artificial intelligence chatbot after Ramaswamy called efforts against carbon energy “a wet blanket on our economy.”

“I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT standing up here,” Christie said. “The last person at 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.”

“Give me a hug just like you did to Obama,” Ramaswamy responded, a nod to the then-president placing his hand on Christie’s shoulder during a visit after Superstorm Sandy. “And you’ll help elect me just like you did to Obama too.”

Haley jumped in after the feisty exchange, distinguishing herself as the only woman onstage.

“I think this is exactly why Margaret Thatcher said, ‘If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman,’” she said, acknowledging that climate change is real and arguing that to address it, the U.S. needs to pressure China and India to lower their emissions.

— Haley went after fellow Republicans on excessive federal spending and nodded to her accounting degree from Clemson. She turned to her rivals with congressional experience to blame them – not Joe Biden – for the nation’s debt.

“You have Ron DeSantis. You’ve got Tim Scott. You’ve got Mike Pence. They all voted to raise the debt. And Donald Trump added 8 trillion to our debt,” Haley said.

Haley said, “So, you tell me. Who are the big spenders? I think it’s time for an accountant in the White House.”

— Most of the early debate focused on the candidates on stage ripping President Joe Biden and his administration’s economic policies.

— DeSantis said that “a major reason” for America’s current struggles is “because how this federal government handled COVID-19 by locking down this economy.” DeSantis, who has talked often on the campaign trail about how he “kept Florida open” during the pandemic, said at the debate that, “As your president, I will never let the deep state bureaucrats lock you down.”

— Of Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert during the pandemic, DeSantis said, “You don’t take somebody like Fauci and coddle him. You bring Fauci and you sit him down and you say, ‘Anthony, you are fired.’”

— Trump may have a dominating early lead in the Republican presidential primary, but he was barely mentioned during the GOP debate’s opening minutes. And that’s despite Christie, who has promised to build his presidential run around stopping Trump, giving a lengthy answer defending his own record in his home state.

— Ramaswamy emerged as a popular target early in the debate, drawing cheers from the audience when he introduced himself.

“Let me just address a question that is on everybody’s mind at home tonight,” the biotech entrepreneur said. “Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name?”

Pence called him a “rookie,” saying people should not elect people without experience. Christie accused Ramaswamy of trying to imitate Barack Obama and said the country had already tried that.

— To start off the debate, candidates were asked to lay out their economic arguments by way of explaining why a viral song decrying high taxes and the wealth of the elite had caught fire.

DeSantis used his response to the popularity of Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” to blame President Joe Biden for what he characterized as “American decline.” DeSantis also took an opportunity to go after Biden’s son Hunter, saying he made “hundreds of thousands of dollars on lousy paintings” while Americans “are working hard, and you can’t afford groceries a car or a new home.”

Christie said he agreed “predominantly” with DeSantis’ response but argued he can be a consensus builder since he was “elected as a conservative Republican in a blue state.”

— The crowd booed former Christie and Hutchinson as they were introduced. The two are among the most prominent anti-Trump candidates in the GOP field.

Other debate news:

They’re not on the stage – and not staying quiet

A couple of the Republican candidates who didn’t make the cut for the first 2024 GOP presidential debate are not being quiet about being left out.

Michigan businessman Perry Johnson on Wednesday released a copy of a complaint his campaign said he had filed with the Federal Election Commission against debate host Fox News and the Republican National Committee. Johnson claimed in a news release that he was left off the debate stage not because he hadn’t met the polling and donor qualifications but because he was “a political outsider.”

Conservative radio host Larry Elder also said he had filed a complaint with the FEC, alleging that rules about debate participation weren’t equally applied to all candidates.

Eight candidates are set to appear on the debate stage in Milwaukee on Wednesday night. The race’s front-runner, Donald Trump, is skipping the event for an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

‘I’m in,’ Burgum says after injuring Achilles

Doug Burgum is a go.

The North Dakota governor will participate in Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate after injuring his Achilles tendon during a basketball game, he confirmed on social media.

“I’m in,” he wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He included a photo of himself walking with crutches on to the debate stage. He wore a boot on his left foot.

Burgum did a walk-through of the stage on his injured leg earlier Wednesday to test whether he would be able to attend. He hurt his Achilles the day before.

Biden says he plans to try to watch the debate

President Joe Biden says he plans to take a break from vacation to watch the first Republican presidential debate, contradicting previous White House comment hoping he might avoid it.

On Wednesday, the president and first lady traveled to Pelo Dog Pilates, an indoor cycling boutique in South Lake Tahoe, California. Speaking to reporters as he left the boutique, the president was asked about watching the GOP debate taking place hours later in Milwaukee. “I’m going to try to see — get as much as I can, yes,” he said.

Asked about his expectations, he responded, “I have none.”

Biden has nothing on his public schedule for the rest of the week after traveling to Hawaii on Monday to survey wildfire damage. While flying there aboard Air Force One, deputy White House press secretary Olivia Dalton was asked if Biden planned to watch the debate and responded, “I don’t know. I sure hope not.”

“I hope for his sake,” Dalton added. “So, but I don’t know, actually.”

Carlson interview with Trump to begin airing shortly before debate

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s interview with Donald Trump will air at 8:55 p.m. Eastern time, just minutes before the first Republican presidential debate begins.

Carlson says his interview with Trump will be posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The interview with the early 2024 Republican presidential front-runner was prerecorded.

Trump indicated for months that he would likely skip the first GOP debate, questioning why he should appear in the same forum as candidates trailing far behind him in polls.

His move also serves the purpose of jabbing at debate host Fox News, which he has criticized as being disloyal to him. Trump’s absence from the debate is widely expected to bring down audience numbers.

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Associated Press writers Sara Burnett in Milwaukee; Jill Colvin in New York; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C.; and Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.

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