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Republican debate live: seven candidates take stage as Trump is once again a no-show | Republicans

Republican candidates take stage for second presidential debate

The seven Republicans who have qualified for the second debate of the 2024 presidential primary are now on stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

The debating should start in a few minutes, and we’ll follow it live here.

Key events

David Smith

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has been holding court in the debate “spin room”, looking very much like a man trying not to look like he is running for president.

“I was asked by the vice president and president of the United States to make a case for the Biden record,” he told reporters by way of explaining his presence.

“The winner of tonight’s debate is clear. It’s Joe Biden and it’s the Biden presidency and the extraordinary job he’s done in the last few years to take unemployment that was 14.7% down to 3.8%. To take inflation, a global phenomenon, from 9.1 to 3.7%.”

Newsom exchanged warm greetings with Fox News host Sean Hannity, who will next month moderate a debate between the California governor and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Newsom told the media: “Ron DeSantis is running for president of United States and he wants to, in the middle of his presidential campaign, debate a governor of California. Think about it: it’s disqualifying. You can goat someone this easy? Can you imagine with Kim Jong-un?”

And he said of the looming government shutdown: “It’s like three blind mice. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Gaettz, McCarthy are walking us off a cliff. I mean, it’s student government. In nearly 30 years there’s been five shutdowns. They have one thing in common: five Republican speakers.”

Republican candidates take stage for second presidential debate

The seven Republicans who have qualified for the second debate of the 2024 presidential primary are now on stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

The debating should start in a few minutes, and we’ll follow it live here.

In Michigan, meanwhile, Donald Trump is trying to position himself as an ally to striking blue-collar auto workers – against the cries of union leaders who have said a second term for the former president would be a “disaster”.

The United Auto Workers have witheld an endorsement in the presidential race, but leaders have repeatedly questioned Trump’s record. Tonight, he’ll be speaking at Drake Enterprises in Clinton Township, north of Detroit, a nonunion shop.

“I find a pathetic irony that the former president is going to hold a rally for union members at a nonunion business,” said Shawn Fain, the president of the UAW.

Fain said he wouldn’t meet with Trump during he visit.

Trump claimed there were thousands at the rally, though there appeared to be a few hundred in the crowd. Several of those who spoke with The Guardian said they are small business owners, or work for small businesses.

“That’s the thing – there are people who are union, but there’s also a whole bunch of us who are not and who work for small businesses, and we are more pro-Trump,” said Laura D., who lives in nearby Mt. Clemens.

Tom Perkins contributed reporting.

From August, here’s the Guardian’s Mary Yang with a look at where the Republican candidates stand on the issues. They probably haven’t changed their minds much since then:

Republicans vying for the 2024 party nomination are set to take the stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Wednesday night for the first debate of the primary season.

The candidates will certainly throw punches at each other and at Donald Trump, who has a significant lead in polls but is skipping the debate. But it’s also a chance for each candidate to present their policy agenda and voice their stance on key voter issues such as abortion and aid to Ukraine.

Here’s where each candidate in Wednesday’s debate stands on issues such as abortion, immigration, the economy and continued aid to Ukraine.

One presidential candidate you can expect to hear plenty from tonight, and about, is Vivek Ramaswamy. He took the stage in Milwaukee last month with the kind of no-compromises, no-concerns rhetoric that was straight out of the Trump playbook, and was in turn jumped on by pretty much everyone else on stage, who called him too inexperienced for the White House. Here’s the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly with a look back at his inaugural debate appearance:

Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur running third in Republican polling, emerged in the absence of Donald Trump as a surprise focus of the first debate of the Republican primary, showing scant respect for other candidates and drawing heavy fire in return.

“We live in a dark moment,” Ramaswamy declaimed, in the distinctly Trumpian and conspiratorial fashion that has become a hallmark of his campaign.

Ramaswamy’s bid for the Republican nomination has been hit by recent scandals over remarks that suggested sympathy for conspiracy theories around the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the January 6 assault on the Capitol. But he has sought to portray himself as a Trump-like outsider taking on the establishment with his extreme views.

All the other presidential candidates onstage in Milwaukee, Ramaswamy repeatedly said, were “bought and paid for” by donors.

After all eight candidates declined to raise their hands when asked if they believed human behavior was causing the climate crisis, Ramaswamy jumped in, stridently rapping out: “Unlock American energy, drill, frack, burn coal, embrace nuclear.”

First debate recap: lots of squabbling, no breakthroughs

About a month ago, Republican presidential candidates gathered in Milwaukee for the first debate of the presidential cycle. Donald Trump opted to skip it, and the lineup of candidates was almost the same as it will be this evening. The lone candidate who qualified for the first debate but failed to make it to the second is Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, whose low name recognition and steadfast opposition to Trump has few takers in the GOP.

The first parley of GOP candidates was characterized by a cross-fire squabbling and insults, much of it directed at Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur whose lack of political experience was seized on by the veterans of various elected offices onstage. Meanwhile, none of the eight candidates had the sort of breakthrough moment that represents the best-case scenario for a presidential debate appearance. If anything, the contours of the Republican primary were largely the same after the debate as they were before it: Trump remains the frontrunner in polls, and all the other candidates are essentially fighting for scraps. If there was a big loser, you might say it was Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, who at the start of the year looked like he’d run a strong challenge to Trump, but whose support has markedly flagged in recent polls.

Here’s more from the Guardian’s David Smith on what we learned from the first Republican presidential debate:

The winners of the first Republican presidential primary debate are … Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Eight candidates who took the stage in Milwaukee tore pieces out of each other while failing to distinguish themselves. They revealed a party of chaos and discord that has veered right of the mainstream on issues such as abortion, education, immigration and the climate crisis. It was a two-hour campaign ad for the Democrats broadcast by Fox News.

The Republican contenders also failed to dent Trump who, with a huge lead in opinion polls, skipped the event in favour of a prerecorded interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. He told Carlson he did not feel like being on stage to be “harassed by people that shouldn’t even be running for president” – a decision that he will now feel was vindicated.

Tom Perkins

The Republican frontrunner won’t on the debate stage tonight.

Instead, Donald Trump is an industrial park in Clinton Township, Michigan, preparing to make remarks at an auto supply shop

Hundreds of supporters lining the street erupted in cheers moments ago as the former president’s motorcade pulled in. Trump’s address today comes after Joe Biden joined striking United Auto Workers on the picket line in Wayne, Michigan yesterday.

The gathering has all the festive and sometimes surreal energy often part of Trump rallies. In one spot, supporters bang on drums, breaking to yell “Freedom!”, and drawing loud cheers from up and down the street. Many are draped in Trump 2024 fags, another flag shows Trump as a Rambo-life figure holding a grenade launcher. Another declares “My governor is an idiot”, a reference to Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Trump has positioned himself as the champion of workers and unions, and Ed Sands, a 73-year-old retired auto supplier employee, buys it: Trump is “the only one who gives a shit about working people,” he said.

“Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Obama – they were all terrible for Macomb County, jobs went to China, south, and you see all these people here today because Trump will bring them back,” Sands added.

The former president’s return to office is all but guaranteed, Sands said. “Look around you, look at these people. Do you think he is going to lose? Do you?”

Christopher Demopolis, 35, who works in heating and cooling, echoed that sentiment, and said his UAW base will play a role.

“I don’t see why he won’t Michigan next time around – a lot of this is going to determine it,” he said, motioning to the lively crowd. “Trump supports the workers, Biden supports the leaders.”

Ronald Reagan is a Republican icon, and his presidential library will play host to tonight’s debate. But as the Guardian’s David Smith reports, it is unlikely the late former president would think much of the direction his party has recently taken:

Tourists posed for photos beside the presidential seal, peered inside the cockpit, studied the nuclear football and gazed at a desk where a “Ronald Reagan” jacket slung over the chair, page of handwritten notes and jelly bean jar made it appear as if the 40th US president could saunter back at any moment.

Air Force One is the star attraction at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. But on Wednesday it is competing for attention with a curving Starship Enterprise-style stage set featuring seven lecterns and microphones for the second Republican presidential primary debate.

The Reagan library describes this as “the Super Bowl” of Republican debates, against the dramatic backdrop of the Boeing 707 that flew seven presidents and close to the granite gravesite where Reagan was buried in 2004, looking across a majestic valley towards the Pacific Ocean.

“As a new field of Republicans make their case to be the next President, the legacy of Ronald Reagan looms larger than ever,” the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, which sustains the library, said in an email statement that will be put to the test at 9pm ET. For there are some who argue that Reagan would no longer recognise a Republican party that now belongs to Donald Trump.

How to watch the debate

Tonight’s debate at the Ronald Regan presidential library in Simi Valley, California begins at 9pm eastern time, and will be broadcast on Fox News and Fox Business Network. For Spanish-language viewers, it will be carried on Univision, according to the Associated Press.

It’s expected to last two hours, and will be moderated by Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney, Fox News’s Dana Perino and Univision’s Ilia Calderón.

And will, of course, be covering it live on this blog.

Where’s Trump?

Léonie Chao-Fong

Donald Trump is skipping the second debate to visit Detroit auto workers instead.

He will attempt to position himself as an ally of working-class voters in Michigan – a Democratic-leaning swing state he carried in his upset 2016 election victory – by promising to raise wages and protect jobs if returned to the White House.

The former president is the clear frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination and will at 8pm eastern time, just before the debate starts, speak before a crowd of current and former United Auto Workers (UAW) members at Drake Enterprises, a nonunion manufacturer in Clinton Township, about a half-hour outside Detroit.

A Trump campaign radio ad released last week and airing in Detroit and Toledo, Ohio, praised autoworkers, and said the former president has “always had their back”.

This is the second debate in a row Trump has skipped. Rather than attend the inaugural GOP debate in Milwaukee, Trump gave an interview to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, which was posted on X, the social network owned by billionaire Elon Musk and formerly known as Twitter.

Who qualified for the second Republican debate?

Seven candidates have qualified for the second Republican primary debate but former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson did not make the cut this time.

Taking part this time are Florida governor Ron DeSantis, South Carolina senator Tim Scott, former vice-president Mike Pence, former UN envoy Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Doug Burgum.

Candidates needed at least 3% support in two national polls or 3% in one national poll and two polls from Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina – all early-voting states.

The candidates also need at least 50,000 unique donors (200 of those need to come from 20 states or territories) and they had to sign a pledge promising to support the eventual nominee.

Republicans — but not Trump — to duke it out in second debate of presidential primary

Good evening, US politics blog readers, and thanks for joining us as the Guardian’s Maanvi Singh and I cover the second debate of Republican presidential candidates. This evening’s face-off takes place at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California, but if you know only one thing about this debate, know this: Donald Trump, who polls show has an overwhelming lead in the race for the GOP nomination, will not attend. The debate stage will instead feature seven candidates, including Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, his ex-vice-president Mike Pence and South Carolina’s senator Tim Scott. We’ll tell you more about who else is there, and what Trump is doing instead, a little later.

That said, there’s still plenty of news to be made at this debate. Here’s what we’ll be watching for:

  • The federal government is on the cusp of shutting down for the 11th time since 1980 due to a protracted dispute over spending among Republicans, mostly in the House. Will the candidates take sides in the spending battle? And if so, will they support speaker Kevin McCarthy and his attempts to placate all wings of his party, or the insurgent Republicans who disputes over spending, border security and parliamentary tactics may soon grind much of the government to a halt?

  • Trump has warned his fellow Republicans against stringent abortion bans that keep the procedure off limits in cases of rape, incest or health complications. Will the candidates join his call, or back hardline restrictions – perhaps even a federal ban?

  • Joe Biden is the target of an impeachment inquiry launched by House Republicans, even though some of their own lawmakers don’t think there’s enough of a case against the president. Do the candidates agree, or do they think House Republicans should press on, even though Democrats’ control of the Senate means there’s practically no chance Biden will be removed from office?



Summarize this content to 100 words Republican candidates take stage for second presidential debateThe seven Republicans who have qualified for the second debate of the 2024 presidential primary are now on stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.The debating should start in a few minutes, and we’ll follow it live here.Key eventsShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureDavid SmithGavin Newsom, the governor of California, has been holding court in the debate “spin room”, looking very much like a man trying not to look like he is running for president.“I was asked by the vice president and president of the United States to make a case for the Biden record,” he told reporters by way of explaining his presence.“The winner of tonight’s debate is clear. It’s Joe Biden and it’s the Biden presidency and the extraordinary job he’s done in the last few years to take unemployment that was 14.7% down to 3.8%. To take inflation, a global phenomenon, from 9.1 to 3.7%.”Newsom exchanged warm greetings with Fox News host Sean Hannity, who will next month moderate a debate between the California governor and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.Newsom told the media: “Ron DeSantis is running for president of United States and he wants to, in the middle of his presidential campaign, debate a governor of California. Think about it: it’s disqualifying. You can goat someone this easy? Can you imagine with Kim Jong-un?”And he said of the looming government shutdown: “It’s like three blind mice. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Gaettz, McCarthy are walking us off a cliff. I mean, it’s student government. In nearly 30 years there’s been five shutdowns. They have one thing in common: five Republican speakers.”Republican candidates take stage for second presidential debateThe seven Republicans who have qualified for the second debate of the 2024 presidential primary are now on stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.The debating should start in a few minutes, and we’ll follow it live here.In Michigan, meanwhile, Donald Trump is trying to position himself as an ally to striking blue-collar auto workers – against the cries of union leaders who have said a second term for the former president would be a “disaster”.The United Auto Workers have witheld an endorsement in the presidential race, but leaders have repeatedly questioned Trump’s record. Tonight, he’ll be speaking at Drake Enterprises in Clinton Township, north of Detroit, a nonunion shop.“I find a pathetic irony that the former president is going to hold a rally for union members at a nonunion business,” said Shawn Fain, the president of the UAW.Fain said he wouldn’t meet with Trump during he visit.Trump claimed there were thousands at the rally, though there appeared to be a few hundred in the crowd. Several of those who spoke with The Guardian said they are small business owners, or work for small businesses.“That’s the thing – there are people who are union, but there’s also a whole bunch of us who are not and who work for small businesses, and we are more pro-Trump,” said Laura D., who lives in nearby Mt. Clemens.Tom Perkins contributed reporting.Updated at 21.03 EDTFrom August, here’s the Guardian’s Mary Yang with a look at where the Republican candidates stand on the issues. They probably haven’t changed their minds much since then:Republicans vying for the 2024 party nomination are set to take the stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Wednesday night for the first debate of the primary season.The candidates will certainly throw punches at each other and at Donald Trump, who has a significant lead in polls but is skipping the debate. But it’s also a chance for each candidate to present their policy agenda and voice their stance on key voter issues such as abortion and aid to Ukraine.Here’s where each candidate in Wednesday’s debate stands on issues such as abortion, immigration, the economy and continued aid to Ukraine.One presidential candidate you can expect to hear plenty from tonight, and about, is Vivek Ramaswamy. He took the stage in Milwaukee last month with the kind of no-compromises, no-concerns rhetoric that was straight out of the Trump playbook, and was in turn jumped on by pretty much everyone else on stage, who called him too inexperienced for the White House. Here’s the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly with a look back at his inaugural debate appearance:Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur running third in Republican polling, emerged in the absence of Donald Trump as a surprise focus of the first debate of the Republican primary, showing scant respect for other candidates and drawing heavy fire in return.“We live in a dark moment,” Ramaswamy declaimed, in the distinctly Trumpian and conspiratorial fashion that has become a hallmark of his campaign.Ramaswamy’s bid for the Republican nomination has been hit by recent scandals over remarks that suggested sympathy for conspiracy theories around the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the January 6 assault on the Capitol. But he has sought to portray himself as a Trump-like outsider taking on the establishment with his extreme views.All the other presidential candidates onstage in Milwaukee, Ramaswamy repeatedly said, were “bought and paid for” by donors.After all eight candidates declined to raise their hands when asked if they believed human behavior was causing the climate crisis, Ramaswamy jumped in, stridently rapping out: “Unlock American energy, drill, frack, burn coal, embrace nuclear.”First debate recap: lots of squabbling, no breakthroughsAbout a month ago, Republican presidential candidates gathered in Milwaukee for the first debate of the presidential cycle. Donald Trump opted to skip it, and the lineup of candidates was almost the same as it will be this evening. The lone candidate who qualified for the first debate but failed to make it to the second is Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, whose low name recognition and steadfast opposition to Trump has few takers in the GOP.The first parley of GOP candidates was characterized by a cross-fire squabbling and insults, much of it directed at Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur whose lack of political experience was seized on by the veterans of various elected offices onstage. Meanwhile, none of the eight candidates had the sort of breakthrough moment that represents the best-case scenario for a presidential debate appearance. If anything, the contours of the Republican primary were largely the same after the debate as they were before it: Trump remains the frontrunner in polls, and all the other candidates are essentially fighting for scraps. If there was a big loser, you might say it was Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, who at the start of the year looked like he’d run a strong challenge to Trump, but whose support has markedly flagged in recent polls.Here’s more from the Guardian’s David Smith on what we learned from the first Republican presidential debate: The winners of the first Republican presidential primary debate are … Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Eight candidates who took the stage in Milwaukee tore pieces out of each other while failing to distinguish themselves. They revealed a party of chaos and discord that has veered right of the mainstream on issues such as abortion, education, immigration and the climate crisis. It was a two-hour campaign ad for the Democrats broadcast by Fox News. The Republican contenders also failed to dent Trump who, with a huge lead in opinion polls, skipped the event in favour of a prerecorded interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. He told Carlson he did not feel like being on stage to be “harassed by people that shouldn’t even be running for president” – a decision that he will now feel was vindicated. Updated at 20.29 EDTTom PerkinsThe Republican frontrunner won’t on the debate stage tonight.Instead, Donald Trump is an industrial park in Clinton Township, Michigan, preparing to make remarks at an auto supply shopHundreds of supporters lining the street erupted in cheers moments ago as the former president’s motorcade pulled in. Trump’s address today comes after Joe Biden joined striking United Auto Workers on the picket line in Wayne, Michigan yesterday.The gathering has all the festive and sometimes surreal energy often part of Trump rallies. In one spot, supporters bang on drums, breaking to yell “Freedom!”, and drawing loud cheers from up and down the street. Many are draped in Trump 2024 fags, another flag shows Trump as a Rambo-life figure holding a grenade launcher. Another declares “My governor is an idiot”, a reference to Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.Trump…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/sep/27/republican-second-debate-2023-desantis-trump-speech-uaw-live-updates Republican debate live: seven candidates take stage as Trump is once again a no-show | Republicans

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