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.


0

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


Fact-checking Burgum’s 87,000 IRS agent stat

This is … what we call, a zombie stat. It’s Mostly False.

The Biden administration never proposed hiring 87,000 additional or new IRS agents.

This 87,000 figure comes from a May 2021 Treasury Department assessment of how it would use $80 billion to improve IRS operations. The report said the IRS would add 86,852 new full-time positions.

But even in the 2021 plan, not all of the hires would be auditors, or work in enforcement. The report said the money would go toward many things, including "hiring new specialized enforcement staff, modernizing antiquated information technology, and investing in meaningful taxpayer service."

Although the agency’s staff would increase, it’s key to note that over half of the IRS workforce is close to retirement. The plan was created with that exodus in mind and aims to hire thousands of people to simply maintain current levels. Today, the IRS has about 80,000 employees.

"The IRS will lose about 50,000 people over the next five or six years," said Natasha Sarin, Treasury’s counselor for tax policy and implementation. "A lot of this hiring is about replacing those people."
-Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact