Seven candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024 are squaring off Wednesday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, for the second debate of the primary cycle.
The candidates participating in Wednesday’s debate include:
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
- Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
- North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum
- Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley
- Former Vice President Mike Pence
- Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina
- Vivek Ramaswamy
The debate kicked off with questions about the strike by the United Auto Workers, the fast-approaching government shutdown and immigration. Most candidates trained their fire on President Biden and politicians in Washington, avoiding direct shots at each other.
Former President Donald Trump, who remains the clear Republican front-runner, skipped the debate to instead speak in Detroit.
The first GOP debate in August featured several fiery exchanges among the candidates but did little to change the underlying dynamic of the race, with no candidate breaking through to challenge Trump’s dominance in the GOP primary polls.
A CBS News poll released Tuesday found Trump leads the Republican primary field comfortably in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two contests. His current margins would translate to winning half of Iowa’s delegates and the lion’s share in New Hampshire.
The debate is airing on Fox Business, Univision and Fox News from 9 to 11 p.m. ET, and can be streamed on Rumble. Stuart Varney of Fox Business, Dana Perino of Fox News and Univision’s Ilia Calderón are moderating.
We’ll be adding highlights and notable moments from the debate below throughout the night:
DeSantis says Trump is “missing in action” for skipping debate
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After a round of questions about the UAW strike, the moderators turned to the looming government shutdown. Speaking for the first time, DeSantis took the opportunity to knock Trump for not showing up to the debate.
“Donald Trump is missing in action,” DeSantis said in response to a question on whether populist Republicans are to blame for the shutdown. “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record.”
DeSantis criticized Trump for adding more than $7 trillion to the nation’s debt during his presidency, which Christie also noted.
“Donald Trump, he hides behind the walls of his golf clubs and won’t show up here to answer questions,” Christie said. “He puts $7 trillion on the debt, he should be in this room to answer those questions.”
Christie said “everyone” is to blame for the shutdown.
“Voters should blame everybody who’s in Washington, D.C. They’re being sent down there to do the job, and they’ve been failing at doing the job for a very long time,” Christie said. “If the government closes, it is to the blame of everyone in Washington, D.C.”
Christie says Biden is “doing nothing” to enforce immigration laws, says Trump also “failed”
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Christie, New Jersey’s former Republican governor, said the U.S. is “not in a position” to legalize the millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.
Asked about former President Ronald Reagan’s decision to sign a law that legalized several million unauthorized immigrants in the 1980s and whether he would support a similar measure, Christie said the U.S. should focus on enforcing immigration laws, citing the high levels of illegal border crossings in the past two years.
“Our laws are being broken everyday at the border,” Christie said. “And Joe Biden and his crew [are] doing nothing about enforcing that law.”
Christie said he would deploy the National Guard to the U.S. southern border if elected.
“We want you here in this country to fill the 6 million vacant jobs we have. But only if you come here to follow the law and only if you come here legally,” he said. “If you come here illegally, we will apprehend you and we will send you back across the border from which you came. And the fact is that until we set a law and order agenda in this country, not only now but in the future, we won’t be able to continue this.”
The former governor also criticized Trump for his record on immigration, saying he did not fulfill his promise to “build a wall” along the border.
“Donald Trump failed on this as well. He said he was going to build a wall across the whole border. He built 52 miles of wall and said Mexico would pay for it,” Christie said, understating the roughly 400 miles of new border wall structures built between 2017 and 2021. “Guess what? I think if Mexico knew that he was only going to build 52 miles, they might have paid for the 52 miles.”
Candidates take aim at Ramaswamy over business record and China
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Like in the first debate, the 38-year-old Ramaswamy again became a target of the other candidates, with his rivals taking aim at his business record.
“Last debate, he said we were all ‘bought and paid for’ and I thought about that for a little while, and said, you know, I can’t imagine how you can say that knowing that you were just in business with the Chinese Communist Party and the same people that funded Hunter Biden [with] millions of dollars was a partner of yours as well,” Scott said.
Ramaswamy called the accusation “nonsense” and said he pulled his company out of the Chinese market while other companies were expanding there.
“You know what I did with my first company? We opened a subsidiary in China. But you know what I did that was different than every other company? We got the hell out of there,” he said.
“Yeah, right before you ran for president,” Haley said.