Dana Perino, one of the moderators, is facing her biggest test as a journalist. (2024)

Pinned

Hostile hopefuls sought to dent Trump’s commanding lead.

At one point, after listening to Mr. Ramaswamy defend his embrace of the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, Ms. Haley could not hide her disgust: “Every time I hear you I feel a little bit dumber,” she said.

But for all the fireworks, the debate likely did nothing to dent Mr. Trump’s commanding lead in the polls, with just three and a half months left before the Iowa caucuses. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, made an effort, tarring Mr. Trump as “Donald Duck” for his failure to show up to a debate for the second time in as many months.

“He needs to be voted off the island and he needs to be taken out of this process,” Mr. Christie said.

But the other candidates trained their fire on each other. Here were some of the key clashes:

• Mr. Scott took Mr. DeSantis to task for a Florida school curriculum that would teach that slavery taught the enslaved useful skills. Mr. DeSantis did try to challenge Mr. Trump for adding $7.8 trillion to the national debt during his time as president.

• It was Mr. Ramaswamy who took the most fire after his star turn in the first debate in August. At one point, Mr. Scott, Mr. DeSantis, and former Vice President Mike Pence ganged up on the 38-year-old political newcomer for his business ties to China and a foreign policy that would cede Eastern Ukraine to Russia and possibly Taiwan to China. “I’m glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in China,” Mr. Pence said. “That must have been about the same time you decided to start voting in presidential elections.”

• In the end, Ms. Haley was the dominant figure, skewering one candidate after another. She tarred Mr. Ramaswamy as naïve and foolish on foreign policy, then seamlessly turned on Mr. DeSantis for opposing fracking and offshore oil drilling in a state where beaches have always taken precedence over energy exploration, then pivoted to Mr. Scott to blast his record on government spending.

Newsom sparred with Hannity, offering a preview of his debate with DeSantis.

In talking with Mr. Hannity in the spin room after the Republican presidential debate, Mr. Newsom made his distaste for Mr. DeSantis clear.

“You just don’t like him,” Mr. Hannity said, to which Mr. Newsom shot back: “Well, I don’t like people who demonize other people or go after vulnerable communities, but I also don’t like liars.”

He offered praise to Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, for her remarks during the debate on Mr. DeSantis’s record.

Much of the conversation focused on gas prices and the southern border, with Mr. Newsom defending his state’s high gas prices as being the result of oil companies “ripping us off.” But Mr. Hannity also pressed Mr. Newsom on his White House ambitions.

Mr. Newsom immediately pivoted to praising President Biden.

“He’s got an extraordinary record to run on, and I couldn’t be more proud,” Mr. Newsom said of the president. “Objectively, he was the winner tonight.”

Mr. Newsom was seen as a likely candidate if Mr. Biden decided not to run. But Mr. Biden has made clear that he will, and Mr. Newsom has given the president his full support.

Pressed by Mr. Hannity on if he would “ever accept the Democratic nomination to run for president in 2024 under any circ*mstances at all,” Mr. Newsom assertively said he would not.

“No. It’s a hypothetical. It’s ridiculous. Joe Biden is our president,” Mr. Newsom said.

Mr. Hannity replied: “You call me ridiculous, I’m going to make you pay for my In-N-Out burger.”

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

“Ron DeSantis is against fracking. He is against drilling.”

Ilia Calderón’s questions stood out at the debate.

Ms. Calderón, 51, is a co-anchor of the nightly newscast of Univision, which co-hosted the debate with Fox News Media and broadcast the proceedings in Spanish. Univision producers retained editorial control over Ms. Calderón’s questions.

Early on, she pointed out that Ronald Reagan, whose presidential library hosted the event, had granted amnesty to nearly three million immigrants, and pressed former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey on a quip he made in 2015 about tracking immigrants the way FedEx tracks packages. (“What we have to do now is first treat this like the law enforcement problem it is,” Mr. Christie replied, without commenting on the FedEx remark.)

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida disputed Ms. Calderón’s question about his state’s new African American history standards, calling her premise a hoax “perpetrated by Kamala Harris.” (In fact, the quotation was drawn directly from the standards.) The question led to one of the more memorable moments of the evening: Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black candidate onstage, jumped in to declare, “There is not a redeeming quality in slavery,” drawing sustained applause from the audience.

Some conservatives watching along took umbrage. “Another weird question,” a reporter for the conservative Daily Signal wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, after Ms. Calderón asked former Vice President Mike Pence about violent hate crimes against L.G.B.T.Q. people.

More often than not, the candidates did not directly respond to Ms. Calderón’s inquiries. And several times, Ms. Calderón — along with her fellow moderators, Dana Perino of Fox News and Stuart Varney of Fox Business — ran into trouble maintaining order. The candidates repeatedly interrupted questions and spoke over one another, with Ms. Perino forced to issue a stern reminder of the rules.

“We’re going to have to cut your mic, and I don’t want to do that,” she warned at one point, which led to some settling down.

Ms. Calderón was born in Colombia and started her career as a broadcaster in Medellín. She joined Telemundo in 2001 and became a co-host of Univision’s evening news program in 2017. She also moderated a Democratic primary debate in March 2020, presiding along with CNN’s Dana Bash and Jake Tapper over the final meeting between Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

“As the U.N. ambassador, you literally spent $50,000 on curtains.”

The debate brought sharp questions from outside the Fox News comfort zone.

The questions stood in stark contrast to those from last month’s debate in Milwaukee. There, candidates were tossed the conservative red meat that is more typical for such a forum, with topics including George Soros, abortion bans and the Jan. 6 attack.

But this time around, Fox wasn’t running the debate by itself. Sharing the moderator’s table was Univision’s Ilia Calderón, who seemed to push the focus outside the Republican comfort zone with questions about “a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants,” how to respond to the end of the DACA immigration policy, and bankruptcies caused by the soaring cost of health care.

“The richest 1 percent now controls one-fifth of all income,” the moderator and Fox Business host Stuart Varney asked former Vice President Mike Pence. “You said you side with American workers. But you also support how these companies operate. Which is it?”

Dana Perino, who served as White House press secretary under President George W. Bush and now works as a host on Fox News, struck a similar note in asking Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina where he stood on the rising cost of child care.

“You had an effort to broaden eligibility for child care assistance; that failed,” she said. “For the moms and dads out there who are worried, what can you tell them if you were not able to get that through Congress — how could you do it as president?”

Most pointed throughout the evening, however, was Ms. Calderón.

What, she asked Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, “is your specific plan to curb gun violence?”

But the sharp questions did not always draw sharp answers.

Mr. Burgum, who signed a proclamation in 2021 naming North Dakota a “Second Amendment sanctuary state,” turned to a familiar retort. The solution to gun violence, he said, was to “get back to behavioral health and mental health.”

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

“They’ve sent money to pay bureaucrats’ pensions and salaries and funding small businesses halfway around the world.”

“We achieved energy independence. We became a net exporter of energy for the first time in 75 years. But on Day 1, Joe Biden declared war on energy.”

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Vivek Ramaswamy is attacked over China, Ukraine and TikTok.

The attacks were broad and searing. Mr. Ramaswamy was hit on his business dealings with China, his pledges to cut off aid to Ukraine and even his presence on TikTok.

“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber,” Ms. Haley said, criticizing his use of TikTok.

In response to a question about why he disagreed with Mr. Ramaswamy’s pledge to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, Mr. Scott turned to Mr. Ramaswamy’s last debate performance.

“We think about the fact that Vivek said we are all good people, and I appreciate that, because at the last debate he said we were all bought and paid for,” Mr. Scott said, adding that he did not understand how Mr. Ramaswamy could say that when he himself did business with the “Chinese Communist Party and the same people that funded Hunter Biden millions of dollars.”

Mr. Ramaswamy argued that he had pulled his company out of China when other C.E.O.s had not. But Mr. Pence dug in further, bringing up the fact that Mr. Ramaswamy had acknowledged he did not vote until relatively recently.

“Let me say, I’m glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in 2018 in China,” Mr. Pence said. “That must’ve been around the time you decided to start voting in presidential elections.”

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

“Congress has only delivered a budget on time four times in 40 years.”