The Poop Show in Milwaukee

First, I need to criticize Fox News. Competing against a Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson interview, Fox News has demanded that no outlet play more than three minutes of audio from the entire debate. They’re censoring themselves in favor of Donald Trump. That’s unhelpful to the process of picking a candidate for the GOP. Likewise, you and I know damn well they will go overboard with coverage of a fourth arrest for Trump, giving disproportionate attention to a fourth arrest over a first debate.

That does a disservice to every Republican voter trying to make up his or her mind. I wish the network would reconsider treating this like a sporting event. That they treat it like a sporting event explains how it went down last night.

In praise of Fox News, however, I must commend them for asking my suggested question of the candidates: was Mike Pence right or wrong on January 6th? Kudos to them for that. Bret Baier and Martha McCallum had a very, very difficult task against some desperate and strong egos. They did good. They asked questions Republicans care about. I thank them for that.

Now, let’s take the candidates one by one.

Asa Hutchinson needs to go away. He was a wasted space on stage. He offered nothing, had weaker answers than anyone else, and was like the ugly kid who gets a sympathetic kiss at a spin-the-bottle contest. One can forgive a wasted performance in a debate, but his was wasted and useless.

My friends were right about Doug Burgum. He surprised me. Despite his injuries, his answers were solid, grounded, and reasonable. He will get some notice, but I'm not sure he can go the distance.

Chris Christie delivered haymaker after haymaker to Vivek Ramaswamy. He had a really strong performance and is a solid debater. His pivot on the stupid UFO question was brilliant. I think the GOP base will struggle to come to terms moving his direction, but his debate performance was strong and helped him.

Tim Scott had a weak performance. I love the guy. I wish him well. He struggled to get in on the conversation. He didn’t force himself in. He lacked Mike Pence’s aggressiveness. His answers were good, but he kept running out the clock. Hutchinson had a wasted and useless performance. Scott had a weak performance and needs to up his game for the next debate.

Mike Pence’s aggressiveness was entertaining. His defense of conservatism was solid. I think Haley got the better of him in the abortion portion, but his response and defense of life will help him with the pro-life community in a way Haley’s will not. Pence’s problem remains his reliance on citing the “Trump-Pence Administration” record and having no strong answer on why his boss should not be re-elected to keep that record going. I asked him that on the stage in Atlanta and think his answer was weak then. He needs to beef that up. Mike Pence, why keep the second man of that administration and not the first? Answer that succinctly and strongly, please. But man, I love that guy.

Nikki Haley might have won the debate. Her exchange with Vivek was so solid. Her answers were polished. She showed real passion across a range of issues. I really think her performance had a lasting impression that people will be talking about tomorrow, with or without clips from Fox News. Her team should be proud.

Vivek Ramaswamy will get some support from the “burn it all down” crowd, but his problem is that this is Trump’s constituency. So where does he go? The man said, on stage, that Donald Trump is the best president of the twenty-first century. I’m stunned that no one followed up to ask why then was he running against Trump. It was obvious on stage that he is not really running against Trump. He’s running as Trump’s blocker and tackler against everyone else. That came across on stage. He repeated lines from Obama, Ted Cruz, and others and avoided too much policy. On foreign policy, he is naive, and frankly, his foreign policy views are dangerously bad. His comparison to Zelensky as “their Pope” struck a lot of Jews as anti-Semitic and many Catholics as anti-Catholic. I know because I got an overabundance of text messages from Jewish and Catholic friends, many of whom had been intrigued by the guy until that moment. On climate change, he said it is fake, but a few months ago, he said it was real. It’s Obama in the quotations and John Kerry in the flip-flops. But the bottom line is that it was clear on stage he intends to serve as a proxy for the man he thinks it the strongest president of the twenty-first century and has no intention of becoming President.

I think Ron DeSantis needed a strong performance. He got it. Everyone chose to go after Vivek instead of DeSantis. He appeared above the fray. He stayed out of the fighting. He kept his answers coming back to the future and against Biden. His border answer was great and I think his climate change response to a stupid hand-waving exercise was spot on. This should mollify his donors, large and small, even if it might not be enough to turn momentum back in his direction. I suspect, however, he can leverage his position on stage to rebound. Just, please, Ron, please — keep talking about pocketbook issues and the border and shut up about the cultural stuff for a bit. Let people hear your economic and border message. Hammer Biden and offer hope.

That the Trump team tried to shoot DeSantis down on social media shows, again, they see him as a serious threat. He did what he needed to do and Christie, Pence, and Haley gave him a strong assist by going after Vivek. You can see a team of rivals shaping up on stage and that benefited DeSantis.

As for Trump, he’ll try to suck all the oxygen out of the room with his fourth arrest today. I personally think a first debate is more important a news story than a fourth arrest. But you can be sure a press that lives in a sick symbiotic relationship with Trump will move on from the debate to the arrest as quickly as possible.

Fox News really should allow us more license to play clips of the debate. But I suspect that is all by design, and that design helps Trump, who tried to undercut their debate. Good for Fox, though, on pulling off the first debate even if none of us are allowed to play audio of it

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