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:
Mostly peaceful protests took place outside debate venue at start of night
A group of more than 100 anti-Republican protestors temporarily took to the street outside Fiserv Forum after the debate began.
The group was advocating on behalf of several causes championed by the left, carrying signs advocating for abortion rights, transgender rights, immigrant rights and Black Lives Matter, among other causes.
Some of the signs were more explicitly political in nature, directly targeting GOP candidates.
One protestor carried a sign reading “Down with DeSantis.”
The group cheered, whistled and chanted as they advanced down the street.
“Get up, get down, Milwaukee is a union town,” was one chant that could be heard.
The protestors were accompanied by legal observers.
The group walked down an open street and at one point briefly blocked traffic. The protestors were otherwise peaceful and dissipated soon after they began.
-ABC News’ Allison Pecorin and Olivia Osteen
The candidates didn't seem eager to talk about climate change
The candidates came to the debate prepared with answers about abortion – carefully considering their wording, and, in a stark departure from the first half hour, actually answering the moderators’ question on the issue.
One thing the candidates didn’t want to talk about? Climate change. The moderators asked the candidates to raise their hand if they believed human behavior was driving climate change — but that didn’t happen. Instead, DeSantis said he wanted to debate rather than answer a question like “school children.” Ramaswamy chimed in to say “the climate change agenda is a hoax,” drawing boos from the crowd, though it wasn’t clear what exactly they were booing. Christie jumped in to say that Ramaswamy sounded like both ChatGPT and Obama. Haley decided that this was the moment to quote Margaret Thatcher — “if you want something done ask a woman” — though she did answer that climate change was real, putting the onus on China. And Scott used the moment to chide the rest of the field for being “childish.”
— Analysis by Leah Askarinam of FiveThirtyEight
Christie on gun violence: 'Lock up these violent criminals'
Christie again focused on his record as New Jersey governor when asked about how he'd address shootings and gun violence plaguing the nation.
He accused prosecutors of not arresting violent criminals and said a "President Christie" would appoint attorney general to instruct U.S. attorney to do so.
"We have plenty of room in the federal prisons to lock up these violent criminals and clean up what's going on all across this country and these individuals," Christie said.
Fact-checking Pence on public support for a 15-week abortion ban
During the abortion back-and-forth, Pence claimed that 70 percent of Americans support a 15-week abortion ban. He’s cherry picking the results from one poll.
A 2022 survey from the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll asked respondents, "Do you think your state should allow abortion…?”
Twenty-three percent said up to 15 weeks, 12 percent said up to six weeks and 37 percent said only in cases of rape and incest. That’s 72 percent all together. But answers in surveys vary greatly depending on how the question is asked.
A 2022 Economist/YouGov poll asked specifically about a 15-week ban — 39 percent supported it, 46 percent opposed it. A 2023 PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll asked respondents whether abortion should be allowed up until 24 weeks — 44 percent said yes.
-Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact
The facts about the 2024 GOP hopefuls
At PolitiFact, this is our fifth presidential cycle. We’ve published more than 23,000 fact-checks since launching in 2007, all using our Truth-O-Meter, which rates claims on a scale from True to Pants on Fire false for the most ridiculous claims.
If PolitiFact is new to you, there are a couple of rules of the road.
First, we don’t fact-check every claim every candidate says. We couldn’t … we’d be dead.
We focus on claims that are particularly interesting, in the news or obviously potentially wrong. Our grading scale tries to measure both the literal truth and how voters might interpret a politicians’ words. So if Pence tonight claims that he and Trump “achieved energy independence” in their first three years in office, it can be more complicated to fact-check than you think.
In Pence’s case, yes, the United States did produce more energy than its citizens consumed during the Trump/Pence White House, but that was built on more than a decade of improvements in shale oil and gas production, as well as renewables. And the U.S. did not produce more gasoline than it consumed (which is maybe what you were thinking about). And if that’s not enough, even though the U.S. didn’t use all the energy it produced, it still imported a substantial amount of energy to serve domestic markets.
So far in this cycle, we’ve published 52 fact-checks of the GOP candidates. Our checks tend to follow the polling of the race. We’ve fact-checked Trump 17 times, DeSantis 14 times, Pence six times, Haley and Tim Scott each five times, and so on. We'll be drawing on those previous fact-checks, as well as the thousands of other claims we've vetted, throughout the night.
-Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact