Highlights from the first 2024 Republican presidential debate on Fox News

As we all know by now, Trump skipped the debate and opted to throw fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson a bone instead. You can watch their roughly 45-minute interview here. Some lowlights, if you will, were Trump discussing Jeffrey Epstein's death and Biden's legs.

Trump has suggested his lead is so strong that he doesn't need to participate in the debates. Another reason he may not want to take the stage could be the potential legal ramifications if he does. After all, he's four criminal indictments deep and any reckless and/or false comments he makes on that stage could expose him to further legal problems.

The next GOP presidential debate is slated for Sept. 27 in Simi Valley, California. It will be hosted by Fox Business. Don't be too surprised if Trump decides to show up to that one.

As Alex Wagner said on MSNBC’s special coverage of the debate moments ago:

I was struck in the second hour of the debate by the fact that even in a Trump-less debate, the shroud of anger and grievance colors everything.

When you talk about people's good moments, it's not because they're offering some brilliant vision or showing humor or humanity or charisma. It's like, "Nikki Haley got really mad at Vivek Ramaswamy and said he has no foreign policy experience and it shows."

There was a time in American politics when winning wasn't just about who was the angriest, who was the meanest, who landed the punch most directly. It is so clear to me that one of the myriad ways in which Trump has transformed the GOP is by making a party that is driven by rage and is powered by a sense of grievance and injustice. There is no offering of a vision of the country. There is the slamming of Democrats, the "liberal elites," and Joe Biden.

As Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC’s special coverage of the debate moments ago:

Ramaswamy certainly was the dominant figure in the debate — for good or for ill. I'm not sure he did himself any favors in terms of people liking him, but he took up the most airtime. It sort of felt like he was the snappy podcast host and everybody was his guests.

As Joy Reid said on MSNBC's special coverage of the debate moments ago:

I'm not sure what any of them are running for. They all felt like they could be Cabinet members in a Trump administration. None of them struck me personally as somebody who could actually be president.

Burgum, I think his name is, seemed like a bored rich guy who has nothing better to do. Christie I thought was going to come off as sort of a bigger figure. I thought he was going to be more of a presence.

Ramaswamy sort of seemed like your annoying freshman roommate in college. It's not clear what he was trying to do other than be provocative at every moment he could.

And DeSantis was just yelling a lot. I'm not sure why he was yelling a lot, and why he thinks yelling made him seem like he had more stature than he did.

Other than Nikki Haley, who seemed like a reasonable Republican politician who kind of made sense, none of them to me even attempted to project the kind of stature a president would have — other than, at times, Mike Pence.

Two hours of cross-talk and double talk did little to change the Republican race. The man leading the polls, who wasn’t on the stage tonight, will still be leading the polls tomorrow, and probably will lead them for the rest of the primary. Like George W. Bush in 2000 and Bob Dole in 1996, Trump won’t suffer for skipping tonight’s debate for a remarkably unremarkable sitdown with Tucker Carlson.

Of those who did show up, nobody did anything to change their campaign’s trajectory. That’s good news for those who came into tonight rising, like Ramaswamy, whose self-regard is inversely proportional to his qualifications. And it’s bad news for those who came in declining, like DeSantis. From getting shown up by host Bret Baier to stammering his way through canned speeches, the Florida governor did nothing to change the view that his moment has already passed.

Ramaswamy’s closing remarks spouting a list of right-wing talking points — “there are two genders,” “reverse racism is racism,” etc. — were pulled directly from a tweet he posted and a speech he’s given routinely as of late, about the "10 Commandments" of his campaign.

The man had weeks to prep for this moment and the best he could do was regurgitate a tweet. Just send us a link next time, Vivek, and spare us the hysterics.

I feel like there’s almost nothing we learned about any of the eight candidates that was truly new, except for those people who discovered that Doug Burgum exists. At most, we learned that Nikki Haley is willing to go after literally everyone else on stage, that everyone hates Vivek Ramaswamy, and that Chris Christie would level with the American people about aliens. What a great use of two hours.

At least twice tonight, DeSantis referred to deploying to Iraq alongside U.S. Navy SEALs. If you’re wondering whether that means DeSantis was a SEAL himself, the answer is no. DeSantis joined the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in 2004. Three years later, he was assigned to SEALs in Fallujah, Iraq, as a legal adviser. He also served at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. 

According to a confidential DeSantis campaign memo obtained by NBC News, “when voters hear about the Governor’s bio principally as a Dad and as a veteran — they like him and are open to hearing more about him.” Whether emphasizing his proximity to SEALs is part of that strategy, I’ll leave for others to decide.

It’s hard to explain how offensive Scott’s attack on teachers unions just was. He said that those unions are “standing in the schoolhouse door” blocking our children.

What?!

Segregationist Gov. George Wallace famously stood in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in June 1963 to symbolically object to the admission of Black students Vivian Malone and James Hood to the University of Alabama.

It’s shameful for a candidate, and a Black candidate from the South at that, to allude to that awful American history and suggest with “schoolhouse door” language that teachers unions are as bad as one of history’s most virulent racists. He can’t be trying to attract Black voters with such an argument.