As the five candidates traded attacks onstage at the third Republican debate in Miami, trying to show voters that they are the best option to challenge Trump’s dominance in the race for his party’s presidential nomination 2024, the former president has once again avoided confrontation with his rivals and instead opted for a rally – just 18 kilometers away. A choice he had already made in the two previous debates, confident that his lead in the polls is such that it is not even worth attending. And the numbers seem to prove him right.
War between Israel and Hamas, Ukraine, abortion, economics, many topics were discussed in a tense confrontation between Ron De Santis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott and Chris Christie – the candidates who qualified for this NBC debate after the Republican National The committee raised the minimum bar to 4% in polls and 70,000 unique donors in 20 states or more, excluding North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. Only one issue brought them together: the attack on Trump. And even this was less aggressive than in previous debates.
“Whoever is going to spend the next week and a half trying to avoid jail and the courts cannot lead this party or this country,” said former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, referring to Trump’s legal troubles. DeSantis, a distant second in the polls (with 18% compared to the former president’s 61%, according to the latest CBS News study) assured that “Trump is a very different man than he was in 2016”, and urged him to appear to explain himself to Republican voters. But the Florida governor didn’t even spend more than 30 seconds on the topic, nor did he go so far as to accuse the millionaire of not having the “balls” to appear in the debates as he had done in recent days.
And the other candidates were even less aggressive. When asked why he considers himself a better candidate than Trump, businessman Ramaswamy chose to blame Republican National Committee President Ronna McDaniel, not Trump, for the party’s successive election defeats. The latest last Tuesday in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Halei made a brief reference to the national debt, which has built up under Trump, while Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina preferred to focus on the need for Republicans to win votes among independents. And while it’s always more complicated to attack someone who isn’t on stage, the AP concludes that none of Trump’s rivals “tried very hard” and that Wednesday’s debate only confirmed that not participating might be the right thing to do. decision was.
Even though the strongest attacks were not against him, the five candidates on stage did not hesitate to attack each other. Especially Haley and Ramaswamy. The former UN ambassador and the businessman, the two sons of Indian immigrants, exchanged jokes until Haley decided not to answer a question about banning Tik-Tok to counter her rival’s arguments. And Ramaswamy launched a personal attack, accusing: “His own daughter had been using the app for a long time, so maybe he should start fixing that.” Which led to Haley asking her opponent to “leave my daughter out of this” and calling him “scum.”
With his combative style, Ramaswamy managed to distinguish himself in the three debates, but this is not reflected in the polls, where he still does not exceed 5%.
Ten weeks before the start of the primary process in Ohio, and despite the four lawsuits against him in court, Trump continues to count on the apparently unconditional support of his supporters. At a rally in a city near Miami, the former president paid little attention to talking about his opponents. Surrounded by supporters wearing red caps with the acronym MAGA – Make America Great Again, Trump preferred to focus on his likely showdown with President Joe Biden in next year’s presidential elections. “His problem is not his age. The problem is that he is completely incompetent,” he said of his Democratic rival, who is about to turn 82 if re-elected. Trump himself turns 78.
Source: DN
