Although the matter was already clear, this time it was ratified in a very obvious way. The Fox network is not interested in Donald Trump’s corruption, despite his 91 charges and the possibility that he will lose control of his businesses in New York, nor his statements on abortion, criticized by pro-life groups that have supported him so much. , or for his assertion that General Mark Milley, still the head of the United States armed forces, should be executed for treason.
The former president stood them up in the first debate, held in Milwaukee last August, when he went with Tucker Carlson, fired from the network, for an interview on X (formerly Twitter). He also gave them the door this Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, in Simi Valley (California). He counterprogrammed them with a rally in Michigan to spout his falsehoods to striking auto company employees. Despite these rudenesses, and the fact that Trump is the absolute leader in the polls, the three moderators of Fox and Univision did not ask a single question about him to the seven contenders for 120 minutes. As if it didn’t exist.
History repeats itself. Seven Republican candidates, none of them named Donald Trump, starred in this second debate between the candidates for the 2024 presidential elections, with almost four months left until the start of the primaries. It all sounded like a hollow event, a talk for the sake of talk between secondary actors due to the absence of the dominator of the race with an enormous advantage, an average of 58% in favor of conservative voters, while Ron DeSantis, who is the one with the most It is close, it has 14%, four times less.
It gave the impression, and this is what analysts expressed, that Trump emerged unscathed, without bruises, from this new display by his rivals, at times so angry with each other that members of the former president’s campaign rubbed their hands. There were those who spoke of “national shame,” with candidates berating each other for spending on curtains, xenophobic and racist attacks, with sycophants of the former president like Vivek Ramaswamy, who wants to be a Trump version 2.0, paying tribute to the president who tried to break the democratic game and perpetuate himself in the power.
However, unlike the other debate, this time there was more daring on the part of some of the participants when it came to trying to undermine the popularity of the absentee and that the moderators went on all the occasions to pick up the gauntlet and delve into the criticism.
Trump was called a coward for standing up, a waster, for wanting a floating federal government over the population, for not knowing how to combat foreign enemies, and for not even respecting voters by not attending the debate.
Those who stood out as detractors were, above all, some of those who played a role as close allies or members of his government: Vice President Mike Pence; the one who was in charge of his transition to government, Chris Christie; his former ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley; and his close friend and supporter, Ron DeSantis.
The governor of Florida carried out the most important charge ideologically, because it affected a conservative core as relevant as the anti-abortion groups. DeSantis rejected the idea that pro-lifers were to blame for the conservative defeat in the 2022 midterm elections and lamented that Trump was “missing in action” instead of being on stage to explain to Republican voters his opposition to the law of a maximum of six weeks to interrupt pregnancy that was approved in Florida and that anti-abortion supporters cheer.
It also upset him that during his presidency the United States debt grew astronomically, like rarely before. “Voters deserve an explanation,” he insisted. Even Biden’s team tweeted about this outburst.
Christie opened fire, becoming one of the great denigrators of the former president for his coup attempt. “I’m going to look at the camera right now to tell you, Donald, because I know you’re watching the debate, you can’t help it,” the former New Jersey governor said. As if focusing on his eyes, he continued: “The fact that you are not here today is not because of the polls, nor because of the criminal charges. You are not here tonight because you are afraid to be on stage and defend your policies. “You are dodging all of this.” Making a pun on “docking” and “duck,” he joked: “We’re not going to call you Donald Trump anymore, we’re going to call you Donald Duck.”
He reproached him for always accusing Joe Biden of being in the basement during the 2020 election campaign, while “Trump hides behind the walls of his golf clubs so as not to show his face.”
Haley focused on the former president’s poor approach to China, one of the Republicans’ favorite topics. “That’s where he went wrong. He focused on business deals. He didn’t notice the fact that China was buying our farmland. He did not focus on the fact that they were killing Americans, that they stole 600,000 million in intellectual property from us,” he said.
Pence, with whom he shared his mandate, made a more subtle allusion. He claimed that Trump helped consolidate “greater power in the executive branch,” which breaks the conservative motto that the less government, the better.
In this second chapter, DeSantis behaved somewhat better. He was the one who had the most minutes and was the least robotic in his responses, with not so rigid smiles, although these facial expressions are not his strong suit. He also seemed looser in exposing his ultra-conservative ideas, among others, bombing drug cartels in Mexico to solve the fentanyl crisis).
Others like Haley (the most combative, she fought with everyone who got in her way, especially Tim Scott and Ramaswamy), or Chris Christie demonstrated their agility as speakers.
