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The candidates at the first 2024 Republican primary debate Wednesday focused their attacks on President Joe Biden in an effort to shift attention away from former President Donald Trump, the clear front-runner for the GOP nomination.
But Biden responded by going on the offensive with a new ad campaign contrasting himself with Trump, who skipped the debate amid mounting legal problems.
The Biden campaign ran its first national television ad Wednesday on Fox News—which hosted the debate—ensuring the president would not let GOP attacks at the debate go unanswered.
The TV ad promoted Biden's record and took a swipe at Trump, who is set to be booked Thursday at the Fulton County jail in Georgia on racketeering charges for his effort to overturn the state's 2020 election results.
Biden urged supporters after the debate to "compare me with the alternative" and donate to his campaign in a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Vice President Kamala Harris also went after the GOP candidates following the debate.
"The American people heard how much they stand to lose from an extremist agenda," Harris said.
The Biden-Harris campaign's focus on Trump reflects the expectation in Democratic circles that the president and Trump are most likely headed for a rematch of the 2020 election. Despite his legal issues, Trump remains the most formidable figure in the Republican primary field, said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist.
"They should not be underselling Trump, so it's a smart move," Sheinkopf said.
The Republican candidates at the debate offered conservative policy visions while painting America as a nation in decline under Biden. But some disagreements emerged on issues like abortion, education, and if the United States should continue sending military aid to Ukraine.
Republican candidates sparred over whether there should be a federal ban on abortion or if the issue should be left up to the states in the wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
There was also a split on U.S. policy toward Ukraine. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy called for ending aid to Kyiv and boosting spending on security along the southern U.S. border. Ramaswamy has shot up in the polls in recent weeks and faced more attacks at the debate than the other candidates, a sign of his surge in popularity.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is polling in a distant second place behind Trump, said future U.S. aid to Ukraine should be contingent on European allies doing more to back Kyiv in its war with Russia.
The views contrasted with former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and other candidates who argued that deterring Russia was a vital national security interest. The argument over Ukraine led to one of the more memorable lines of the debate, when Haley dismissed Ramaswamy's grasp of foreign affairs.
"You have no foreign policy experience and it shows," Haley said.
But the most glaring divide was over Trump, and whether the Republican Party should move on from the four-times indicted former president.
Ramaswamy said that Trump should be pardoned if he is convicted of a crime. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made the most forceful case of any of the candidates for moving past Trump, saying his conduct disqualified him from serving as president again.
The back-and-forth about Trump was just one small slice of the free-wheeling two-hour debate. But Trump's presence hung over the event nonetheless.
Trump pre-recorded an interview with former Fox host Tucker Carlson that was live-streamed during the debate. The counterprogramming kept Trump in the spotlight even when he wasn't being mentioned on the debate stage in Milwaukee.
"Trump wasn't there, but he cast a wide shadow," said Ron Lester, a Democratic consultant, adding that Wednesday's debate did little to change the underlying dynamics of the Republican primary race.
"I don't think anybody emerged from the pack or had a performance that is going to catapult them to the nomination" over Trump, Lester said.
About the writer
Daniel Bush is a Newsweek White House correspondent based in Washington, D.C. His focus is reporting on national politics and ... Read more