Republican debate highlights and analysis: Fiery faceoff on Trump, Ukraine and more
The 2024 hopefuls took the stage in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, without Trump.
The first Republican debate of the 2024 presidential primary was held in Milwaukee on Wednesday night.
Eight candidates qualified for a spot on the stage: North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
Missing from the event was the primary's early front-runner: former President Donald Trump, who declined to participate and instead released a pre-recorded interview with Tucker Carlson.
ABC News and FiveThirtyEight live-blogged every major moment and highlight from the debate, aired on Fox News, with FiveThirtyEight providing analysis and a closer look at the polling and data behind the politicians. PolitiFact made real-time fact checks of key statements.
Read deeper:
Most candidates say Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6
Scott, DeSantis, Christie, Haley and Burgum (plus, of course, Pence) all said tonight that Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6 by refusing to overturn the results of the 2020 election (which he didn’t have the legal ability to do anyway). That’s a notable break from one of the highest-profile tenets of Trumpism — that he was the rightful winner in 2020. In fact, in 2022, we found that only 31 percent of Republican candidates for Senate, House, governor, attorney general and secretary of state had accepted the legitimacy of Biden’s election. Tonight, a majority of the GOP presidential candidates have done so.
-Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight
Bret Baier just asked about increasing funding to Ukraine. According to a July poll by SSRS/CNN, 71 percent of Republicans say that the U.S. Congress should not authorize additional funding to support Ukraine, while 28 percent say that it should. However, there is more support among Republicans for some other U.S. actions in Ukraine, such as 56 percent who support assisting Ukraine in intelligence gathering, 48 percent who support military training for Ukranians, and 30 percent who support supplying the Ukrainian military with weapons.
-Analysis by FiveThirtyEight
A potentially awkward moment for Pence
Christie is praising Pence for standing up to Trump after the 2020 election. But I don’t know if Pence wants an endorsement from the most-booed candidate of the night.
— Analysis by Leah Askarinam of FiveThirtyEight
Republicans remain unconvinced of former President Donald Trump’s guilt: According to an August poll from Premise, 77 percent of Republicans don’t believe Trump is guilty of trying to overturn the 2020 election. And in a CivicScience poll from August, 60 percent of Republicans said that Trump wasn’t guilty of any of the criminal charges he’s been indicted on across three different cases.
-Analysis by FiveThirtyEight
The discussion has turned to the U.S. relationship with China. Republicans’ opinion of China has been steadily worsening over the last six years, according to polling from YouGov/The Economist. As of their most recent survey, 91.4 percent of Republicans said China is an enemy of the United States, while just 3.7 percent said China is an ally. The last time more Republicans said that China was an ally than said it was an enemy was April 17, 2017.
-Analysis by FiveThirtyEight