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.
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I've been watching Scott tonight, and he argued for greater southern border security to push back on the drug trade. But despite being the only U.S. senator on stage, he didn't touch on the Ukraine-Russia conflict and U.S. policy in it, an interesting omission. Although he came into tonight with a very high ceiling of potential support, Scott has been somewhat anonymous tonight, with more coming from Pence, Ramaswamy and Christie.
-Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 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
Haley calls Putin a 'murderer' in fiery exchange over Ukraine aid
Haley, as a former ambassador, made an impassioned case for the U.S. continuing military and financial aid to Ukraine amid Russia's invasion.
"When you look at the situation, you have a pro-American country that was invaded by a thug," she said. "You want to talk about what has been given to Ukraine, less than 3.5% of our defense budget has been given to Ukraine. If you look at the percentage per GDP, 11 of the European countries have given more than the U.S."
She was interrupted by Ramaswamy, who is opposed to further assistance, and the two had a fiery back-and-forth.
Haley told the political newcomer: "You have no foreign policy experience and it shows."
On Ramaswamy's approach to Putin, Haley said: "This guy is a murderer and you are choosing a murderer."
-ABC News' Alexandra Hutzler
Candidates keep coming back to the border
Scott just took a question about national security and turned it into one about immigration, saying our Southern border is the greatest national security threat. Ramaswamy did something similar earlier. If you look at the polling, it’s easy to see why: According to our FiveThirtyEight/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, 36 percent of Republicans identified “controlling immigration” as one of their top issues in the primary — second only to inflation and rising prices.
-Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight
FiveThirtyEight takeaways: Christie fights, Scott struggles to break through
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pugnacious Christie repeatedly mixed it up with other candidates tonight. He was critical of Trump, calling the front-runner's behavior "unbecoming" and making him unfit to be president. Christie has a track record of strong debates, having shown in 2016 how he can throw a verbal punch, including his famous takedown of Marco Rubio just ahead of the New Hampshire primary that year. But Christie's criticism of Trump and his high unfavorable ratings among Republicans make his performance unlikely to cause a Christie boomlet in this race.
For Scott, tonight was an opportunity to capitalize on his potential as a candidate who is well-liked by Republicans familiar with him but who is not that well-known. And he largely tried to stay above the fray on most issues, which in theory made sense if he wanted to look like a consensus-style candidate who most Republicans could like. However, that also led to him getting less airtime, as the candidates who engaged each other and freely interrupted were more likely to be on camera. This debate doesn't hurt Scott, but I'm skeptical it helped him much.
-Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of FiveThirtyEight