Republican debate highlights and analysis: Candidates squabble in Simi Valley
2024 hopefuls argued over education, spending and border security.
The second Republican debate of the 2024 presidential primary, taking place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, has just come to an end.
The affair was more raucous than the first debate, which took place over a month ago. Candidates interrupted one another much more regularly and several — most notably former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — have directly criticized front-runner Donald Trump, who elected not to show up tonight. The two candidates from South Carolina, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, went after one another for their records on spending, and seemingly everyone who had the chance to take a shot at entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy did so.
Read below for highlights, excerpts and key moments.
Latest headlines:
- South Carolina on South Carolina: Nikki Haley and Tim Scott spar several times on stage
- Brief debate answers on Ukraine reveal a rift among Republicans over the issue
- Survivor, GOP primary edition?
- Pence seems to be playing out the string
- Ramaswamy and Scott's debate over birthright citizenship devolves into chaotic exchange
Nikki Haley is going in on Tim Scott's tenure in D.C., asking him "Where have you been? Where have you been, Tim? We've waited 12 years!" without mentioning that she was the one who sent him to the Senate in the first place!
—Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor
Fact-checking fracking
DeSantis misleads on his position. DeSantis said Haley wasn't telling the truth about the Florida governor's actions on fracking. But it's DeSantis who is the one who needs to do more explaining.
Even before he entered office, DeSantis promised to urge Florida's legislature to ban hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, statewide.
"With Florida's geological makeup of limestone and shallow water sources, fracking presents a danger to our state that is not acceptable," the governor's campaign website read, adding that fighting fracking was a day one action.
Almost all of the action DeSantis took on fracking occurred shortly after he became governor. Just two days into his term, DeSantis issued an executive order with several water policy reforms and a line directing the Department of Environmental Protection to push to end all fracking in Florida.
The order instructed the department to "take necessary actions to adamantly oppose all off-shore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing in Florida." Fracking injects water, chemicals and sand at ultrahigh pressure to force open layers of rock and unearth the oil (or sometimes natural gas) that's trapped inside.
-Analysis by Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact
Americans of both parties don’t expect the national deficit to shrink, according to a June poll from the Pew Research Center. Seventy percent of respondents said they expected the annual deficit to grow in the next five years, including 80 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats. Just 11 percent of respondents said they thought the deficit would be smaller in five years, including 9 percent of Republicans and 14 percent of Democrats.
—Analysis by 538
Pence seems to be playing out the string
A couple times tonight, Pence has made the case for a conservative, small-government focused GOP. But as evidenced by the crickets on his initial joke at the start of the debate, there just doesn't seem to be much appetite for him in the Trumpified Republican Party. This isn't a surprise really, given he started the campaign already a villain to many Republicans because Trump had blamed him for his defeat because Pence didn't try to block certification of Biden's victory. But Pence finds himself on the edge of the stage tonight because of his low polling level, and there has really been no good polling news for him recently. His horserace numbers are flat or going down and his favorability numbers among Republicans have worsened, with only Christie having more negative ratings. When might Pence actually leave the race? No idea. But in a field full of candidates who are struggling to have a path to winning, Pence is among those with the least signs of hope.
— Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538
Christie on crime
Christie gets the first question out of the break on how to handle crime, and he made the case that he's the only person on stage whose done it as a former prosecutor. But he turned the question into an attack on Trump, calling out Trump for skipping out on the debate, saying that soon he'll be called "Donald Duck" for avoiding it. The thing is, Christie has essentially a 0 percent chance of winning the GOP nomination, so it's not especially interesting to hear him go after Trump. Earlier in the debate, DeSantis did echo an attack Christie made by hitting Trump for not being on stage to defend the former president's record on spending. More of those kind of dings from anyone besides Christie would be a development in this debate.