Republicans Spar In Second GOP Debate Without Trump: Live Updates

This concludes our live coverage of Wednesday's Republican presidential debate.

The candidates will next face off on November 8 in Miami.

The Trump campaign called on the Republican National Committee to stop holding primary debates, calling Wednesday’s event “boring and inconsequential.”

“President Trump has a 40- or 50-point lead in the primary election and a 10-point lead over Joe Biden in the general election, and it’s clear that President Trump alone can defeat Biden,” campaign advisor Chris LaCivita said. (The referenced poll with Biden has been criticized, but the numbers against his fellow Republicans are in line with national polling data.)

“The RNC should immediately put an end to any further primary debates so we can train our fire on Crooked Joe Biden and quit wasting time and money that could be going to evicting Biden from the White House.”

As the last question of the night, moderators asked each candidate onstage to write on a piece of paper the name of the candidate they believe should be “voted off the island,” a reference to the show “Survivor.”

The question quickly broke down after DeSantis criticized moderators for not making the debate’s closing a more serious query. Christie said he wrote down Trump’s name, stressing that the former president needs to get out of the primary race. DeSantis and Ramaswamy tried to market themselves as candidates that can beat Trump.

The remaining candidates did not get a chance to answer, marking an awkward end to the two-hour debate.

Though he advocates for so-called “fracking” — or hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting fossil fuels from deep underground — as a part of U.S. energy policy, DeSantis did in fact once oppose fracking in Florida.

While attacking DeSantis, Haley said he is “against fracking.” She also claimed that on the second day of his governorship, DeSantis banned fracking and off-shore drilling.

DeSantis did call for a fracking ban in Florida: As a candidate, an archived version of his gubernatorial campaign website says, he called to “Work to Ban Fracking in the State of Florida.” On the second day of his governorship — a time marker that Haley emphasized — he issued an executive order that, in part, instructed environmental officials to “Take necessary actions to adamantly oppose all off-shore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing in Florida.”

But the Florida legislature didn’t pass any laws to enforce such a ban, and as PolitiFact noted last October, Floridians Against Fracking Coalition co-chair Kim Ross called DeSantis’ early anti-fracking activity "one small chirp at the beginning of his term followed by crickets."

Christina Pushaw, a DeSantis spokesperson, responded online to the Haley attack by noting what DeSantis did on stage — that in 2018, in the same election that brought DeSantis to the governor's office, Florida voters enacted a constitutional amendment that “Prohibits drilling for the exploration or extraction of oil and natural gas beneath all state-owned waters between the mean high water line and the state’s outermost territorial boundaries.”

DeSantis was asked about student loans and used the moment to criticize colleges with gender studies programs, a reference to his efforts to limit teachings of so-called “woke” subjects in Florida.

He then moved on to talk about how the 9/11 terrorist attack inspired him to join the military.

It has been more than 90 minutes since the debate started, and none of Trump’s four indictments have come up yet.

Christie, the only candidate onstage who said he wouldn’t support a convicted Trump for president, briefly mentioned the indictments early in the debate. But the candidates on stage have not debated about the Republican front-runner facing several criminal cases.

In a notable moment, Haley went after Trump’s policies on China, saying the former president “went wrong” on multiple levels, including focusing on trade with Beijing instead of other issues.

She said that as president, she would end all normal trade relations with China until there were steps to address fentanyl exports.

“I will make sure every American is safe,” Haley said.

When asked about parental rights in education, Ramaswamy quickly took the opportunity to punch down at the transgender community, vowing to ban “genital mutilation and chemical castration.”

This language has been echoed among conservatives this year, despite being factually inaccurate. Most trans youth socially transition before opting to go on puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy in their teens; this has widely been accepted by most medical associations as necessary and lifesaving treatment.

“Transgenderism, especially in kids, is a mental health disorder,” Ramaswamy said. “It is not compassionate to affirm a kid’s confusion.”

The entrepreneur said he met two women, including someone named Chloe, who regretted their decision to undergo gender-affirming care. He was likely referring to Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old who has made a name for herself among conservative legislators as a go-to expert on the harms of transitioning as a minor. Her story has been used again and again this year to push forward laws banning gender-affirming care for minors in states like Tennessee, Florida and Utah.

Ramaswamy and Pence both vowed to protect children from “transgenderism” and provide more rights for parents. Already, we have seen states pass laws that require teachers to inform parents if their child changes their name or pronouns at school, which critics say puts young trans kids at risk if their families are not supportive.

The Florida governor defended his state’s Black history curriculum, which has come under fire for not accurately reflecting America’s racist past and present. The controversial curriculum says that students should be taught that enslaved people developed skills for personal benefit.

DeSantis has claimed that the standards are being misconstrued, but Scott countered the governor on the debate stage by saying, “There is not a redeeming quality in slavery.”

Pence swiftly dodged a question by moderators about whether he thinks Obamacare is “here to stay,” choosing to instead bring up his belief that mass shooters should face an expedited death penalty.

The former vice president appeared to go after Ron DeSantis regarding the fate of the school shooter in Parkland, Florida. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison instead of the death penalty – something the Florida governor could not control. DeSantis did push for legislation after that sentencing to make it easier to get death sentences in the state.

Moderator Dana Perino called out Pence for deflecting her question about health care.

Ramaswamy, who recently joined TikTok, reiterated his calls that Americans under the age of 16 should be banned from some social media sites.

“If you’re 16 years old or under, you should not be using an addictive social media product,” he said.

Why are the United Auto Workers on strike? They’ll tell you: They want higher wages, reinstatement of cost of living increases and the end of the “tiered” system that stratifies workers among other things. But rather than address those points, the GOP presidential contenders pivoted to right-wing grievance culture.

Scott, after criticizing autoworkers for demanding “more benefits working fewer hours,” went after Biden for visiting a UAW picket line. “Joe Biden should not be on the picket line, he should be on the southern border, working to close our southern border,” Scott said, before moving to an unrelated point about fentanyl overdose deaths.

Ramaswamy used his time to give some “advice” to striking workers: “Go picket in front of the White House in Washington, D.C.,” he said, arguing that federal policy had driven up the cost of living. Then he pivoted to a pro-drilling, pro-fracking message, again completely untethered to the question.

Pence, asked a direct question about the “Big Three” auto executives’ pay, blamed “Bidenomics” for fueling the strike, and called for the “repeal” of the “Green New Deal,” which is impossible because it was never enacted into law. Then he plugged “right to work,” a shorthand for anti-union laws that allow non-union members to take advantage of contract benefits negotiated by unions, without paying dues to those unions.

Haley, for her part, said striking workers were “actually there” because of government spending under Biden’s watch. The answer, she said, was a series of tax cuts. Burgum, butting in and insisting on having his say, essentially repeated his colleagues, saying the strike was the result of Biden “interfering in capital markets” with eclectic vehicle subsidies.

Ramaswamy and Scott got into the first big heated exchanges of the night, with Scott taking a swipe at the businessman for saying other candidates were “bought and paid for” in the last debate. Scott accused Ramaswamy of being “bought and paid for” by left-leaning individuals and the Chinese government.

The exchange turned into a prolonged shouting match with little intervention by moderators.

Ramaswamy said he would end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, adding he would take steps to militarize the southern border, stop funding so-called sanctuary cities and end foreign aid to central and South America. Anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen under the 14th Amendment.

“As a father of two sons it is hard to look them in the eye and say you have to follow the law” when others don't, the businessman said.

Candidates will have one minute to answer questions and 30 seconds to respond if singled out.

A bell will ding when their time runs out.

“Please, keep it civilized,” Varney said.

Scott got the first question about striking auto workers.

Tonight’s debate will once again be broadcast on Rumble, a right-wing video-sharing site, as it was last month. The conservative alternative to YouTube is known not only for peddling far-right extremism, election disinformation and QAnon conspiracy theories, but is also a haven for anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.

Media Matters, a media watchdog organization, found that Rumble allows users to post anti-LGBTQ+ slurs, misgender trans people and peddle baseless claims that LGBTQ+ people are “groomers” and “pedophiles.”

This year, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said the Republican Party’s decision to use Rumble was a way of “getting away from Big Tech.” In a statement, McDaniel said that “hate, bigotry, and violence is unfortunately prevalent on every media platform, and the RNC condemns it entirely, but the RNC does not manage content or pages outside of our own.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson will not attend the second Republican presidential debate tonight after failing to meet the debate requirements set forth by the Republican National Committee.

He is the only candidate who was present in the first debate last month to not make it to the second one, according to ABC News.

Still, Hutchinson vowed to continue his 2024 campaign and laid out new goals on Monday to keep him in the race.

"Despite falling short of the RNC's polling requirement for inclusion in the second Presidential Primary Debate, I will continue our campaign to bring out the best of America with events scheduled in Iowa, New Hampshire, and across the country in the next several weeks," Hutchinson said in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.

"My goal is to increase my polling numbers to 4% in an early state before Thanksgiving," he said. "If that goal is met, then I remain competitive and in contention for either Caucus Day or Primary Day."

Trump is still the far-and-away front-runner in major polls, leading by around 40 percentage points over his next closest competitor, Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor is looking for a breakout moment that could help him close some of that distance, but the chasm has given Trump ammunition in his decisions to skip the Republican presidential debates.

The former president has also begun to gain ground in some polls asking about a potential match-up with Biden. Some show an essential tie between the two men with a year to go before the election.

The debate is set to get underway at 9 p.m. ET. We'll have live coverage in the lead-up to and throughout the debate.