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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Fact-checking DeSantis’s claim that Florida eliminated CRT from schools

That’s Mostly False.

In checking previous instances when DeSantis made this same claim, PolitiFact found no evidence that critical race theory, a broad set of ideas about racism being woven into American systems, was being taught in Florida’s K-12 schools in the first place. Educators, school officials and several Florida public school districts told us that CRT has never been part of the state curriculum.

PolitiFact found a few examples of state education officials objecting to textbooks and courses they said contained CRT teaching in recent years. They show the state’s objections to prospective teaching materials, and success in preventing content it deemed to be CRT-related. But questions remain about its rationale and broad definition of the theory and other prohibited topics.
-Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact


DeSantis: 'We need education, not indoctrination'

Asked about how he would fix America's education system, DeSantis said "we need education, not indoctrination."

The governor defended keeping schools open during the COVID-19 pandemic and argued that the lockdowns were connected to students falling behind.

He also touted his response to the culture wars, saying Florida "eliminated" critical race theory and gender ideology in K-12 schools.

-ABC News' Hannah Demissie and Will McDuffie


On education, Ramaswamy says he would eliminate the Department of Education and make families more central to their children's educational choice. Central to Ramaswamy's campaign is that several federal agencies should be eliminated, but the idea of parental choice in education has swept through conservative states this year. Four Republican-led states passed new universal voucher programs that would allow parents to take tax dollars and spend them on private schools, including religious schools, or homeschool their children. More states have pushed for parental bills of rights that allow students' parents to have more of a say, and object to more, curricula.
-Analysis by Monica Potts of FiveThirtyEight


According to a Ipsos/Reuters poll from July, 77 percent of Republicans say that transgender athletes should not be able to participate in children’s sports at the elementary/high school level. Just 18 percent say they should, and 6 percent are not sure.
-Analysis by FiveThirtyEight


Trump has a huge lead in the endorsement primary

In 2016, Trump was the ultimate outsider candidate — he didn’t receive a single endorsement from a sitting senator, representative or governor until after he had already won New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. This year, though, he already has a ton of elite support. According to the FiveThirtyEight endorsement tracker, he has 343 endorsement points — nearly eight times as many as DeSantis, who is in second place.

The 2016 race notwithstanding, endorsements have historically been very predictive of who eventually wins a party’s nomination. The candidate with the most FiveThirtyEight endorsement points on the day before the Iowa caucuses has won 11 of the last 17 Republican and Democratic primary fights without an incumbent president. And when that candidate has a dominant endorsement lead, they win even more often: Endorsement leaders who had collected more than 15 percent of the estimated available endorsement points before Iowa won nine times out of 10. And Trump already has 17 percent of all available endorsement points with five months left until Iowa.

-Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight