Sometimes there is simply too much news by too many people, all in the space of a few hours, and it becomes enough to make one’s head spin. 

Within the same few hours, the head of Russia’s Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, his second-in-command, and several others died in an apparent fatal plane crash (or, as has been darkly speculated, by an order of Vladimir Putin to have it downed over Russian territory, even as Putin is participating vicariously in the Johannesburg BRICS summit). 

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, himself a former renowned anti-mafia government prosecutor — and the man who once was “America’s mayor” after 9/11 as he rallied the national spirit — has had his mug shot taken (and he signed his bail agreement), after being indicted for his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results in the state of Georgia in favour of Donald Trump. 

The former president will have his own mug shot taken and he will also sign a bond agreement in Atlanta on Thursday afternoon, to meet a court-imposed deadline.

At almost the same time, eight would-be leaders of America’s Republican Party — absent the party’s titular leader, Donald Trump — gathered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to strut their stuff on Fox News in the first combined effort to prove their bona fides as the next Republican nominee for president.

A viewer watches former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s interview with Tucker Carlson on the platform ‘X’ on their phone in Miami, Florida, US, on 23 August 2024. Trump chose not to attend the debate and instead broadcast the interview with Carlson. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich)

Donald Trump did not participate, choosing instead to release a taped interview with Tucker Carlson in which he reiterated his whining and grievances over the previous election.

As the Associated Press reported, “Trump had said it is beneath him to appear with the other candidates on the Milwaukee debate stage because of his large lead in the polls. His ongoing feud with Fox News Channel, which hosted the debate, seemed to cement his decision.

“‘Do I sit there for an hour or two hours, whatever it’s going to be, and get harassed by people that shouldn’t even be running for president?’ Trump said in the 46-minute interview. ‘Should I be doing that at a network that isn’t particularly friendly to me?’” Apparently not, even though Trump and Fox used to be as thick as thieves.

Trump in control

Wednesday’s debate was the first of what will be a mind-numbing roster of other debates in future, even as the number of wannabe presidential candidates is slowly winnowed down.

Those whose support ebbs away will eventually decide their faint hope of being an unexpected front-runner is no longer worth the humiliation, personal embarrassment and abuse that comes with their pursuit of the prize.

However, this first debate and its aftermath prove that, incredible as it may seem, given all of his legal troubles, Donald Trump still has a majority of Republican Party loyalists in the palm of his hand.

This is about what one would expect in a cult where the adherents go to the rallies to have tons of fun and group solidarity, similar to the way folks travelled from one Grateful Dead concert to the next. Trump rally participants also get to vent their furies at the bicoastal elites – the “woke” and, surreptitiously, the minorities they believe are getting more than their share.

However, how this form of idol worship will translate into a winning national vote total will be another story.

Current circumstances and polling popularity may be very different from the chances of winning a majority of votes for the general election on 5 November 2024, but that will be a story for another day.

Still, at least for now, despite not showing up at the debate, Trump issued that pre-recorded conversation with Tucker Carlson over the social media channel formerly known as Twitter. It was, not surprisingly, filled with his usual grievance-peddling and whining. That has left most pundits frowning while acknowledging the evening’s overall winner was the former president.

Ramaswamy uses Trump’s playbook

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy participates in the first debate of the GOP primary season hosted by Fox News at the Fiserv Forum on 23 August 2023 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo: Win McNamee / Getty Images)

Within the debate itself, the emerging consensus is that 38-year-old biotech rich guy Vivek Ramaswamy and former South Carolina governor and Trump administration ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, bettered themselves somewhat in the tumult.

The former has come forward as yet another political outsider, untainted by Washington, and offering some outlandish, even hallucinogenic, ideas such as cutting the federal workforce by 70% and with time limits for officials in those positions — things that will appeal to the Trumpians.

Meanwhile, Haley came across as a more seasoned defender of rather traditional internationalist Republican Party views, most especially in terms of continuing strong financial and security support to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. 

Through these clashes, Haley and Ramaswamy presented starkly different opinions. Fascinatingly, this colloquy — including some smirky grimaces from him and some school teacherly finger-pointing from her — featured the two South Asian-American candidates, rather than some of the others on the stage who looked rather more like the popular understanding of what a Republican looks like.

Scoring the debate, the Washington Post commented, “Republican presidential contenders targeted each other Wednesday as much as they did the absent front-runner, Donald Trump, in a combative first debate with a series of heated clashes reflecting the fierce competition to emerge as the main alternative to the former president.

“Trump’s decision to skip the event, a choice that highlighted his commanding polling lead, left him without a defence over two hours that marked the official start of the nomination battle.

“His biggest consolation came when all but one of the candidates onstage [Asa Hutchinson demurred] raised their hands to signal they would support Trump if he won the nomination and was convicted of a crime in a court of law. Trump has been indicted four times and faces 91 criminal charges and will surrender in Georgia on Thursday.

“But the debate more often pivoted around other fiery exchanges between candidates who are seeking to differentiate themselves, including several involving entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has risen in some polls and appeared to irritate other candidates onstage.

“The first-time millennial candidate is casting his candidacy as the next iteration of Trump and got into tense back-and-forths with more experienced politicians, including former vice president Mike Pence, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie.”

Or, as Axios’ Mike Allen noted, “Except for one section about Trump’s indictments, most of the two-hour show was like a normal debate, with one big problem — the most relevant candidate was 900 miles away at his golf club in New Jersey.” Or, as wags are now putting it, the elephant that was not in the room.

The race for second

Taking the whole show into consideration, in some ways it seemed like an audition for the vice presidential nomination nod, assuming Trump is actually renominated as the Republican’s presidential candidate next August. 

Of course, in the aftermath of the 6 January 2021 insurrection when then-vice president Mike Pence refused to halt the confirmation of Joe Biden as president-elect, he will never be Trump’s running mate again and so some on stage were clearly trying to position themselves as logical picks — offering geographical, ethnic, racial and gender considerations.

In the American system, the eventual presidential nominee makes the final choice, and, assuming Trump actually is the nominee, he’ll pick whomever he wants, if he secures the nomination.

In terms of the interplay between the eight, as the Post went on to note, Ramaswamy “aggressively attacked his rivals on the stage from the start, describing them as ‘super PAC puppets’ and ‘professional politicians’ who were ‘bought and paid for…’” To that, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie snapped back, “I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT standing up here [meaning Ramaswamy]. The last person in one of these debates… who stood in the middle of the stage and said, what’s a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here, was Barack Obama, and I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight.”

To show that he has the stomach for this battle, he took aim at Ramaswamy’s total lack of political experience. He argued, “Now is not the time for on-the-job training… we don’t need to bring in a rookie.”

Take that, you young whippersnapper!

Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on television screens at a watch party for the first 2024 Republican presidential primary debate at Johnny Pistolas bar on 23 August 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

Ultimately, much of the debate revolved around the candidates’ respective personal characteristics and they did not speak about the man now leading the pack for much of the time, except on particular policy issues, such as when Florida governor Ron DeSantis attacked the absent frontrunner for following the advice of former White House medical adviser, Anthony Fauci.

As DeSantis said, “I will never let the deep state bureaucrats lock you down. You don’t take somebody like Fauci and coddle him. You bring Fauci in, you sit him down, and you say: Anthony, you are fired.” Whatever.

Meanwhile, Haley chose as her line of attack the former president, saying, “Donald Trump added $8-trillion to our debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us.” Later on, she labelled Trump “the most disliked politician in America… We can’t win a general election that way.”

That new generation talk goes right back to candidate John Kennedy and his criticism of Eisenhower and his crowd in 1960, just by the way.

Chris Christie, however, drew boos from the clearly partisan crowd when he chastised Trump’s conduct in office, adding, “This is the great thing about this country — booing is allowed, but it doesn’t change the truth.”

While DeSantis was clearly prepped to defend himself from an onslaught by the other claimants, given his softening second-place position, the others largely avoided attacking him, choosing to joust over policy issues or tackle the 38-year-old billionaire, Ramaswamy.

In the grander scheme of things, however, whatever was said on Wednesday night will matter less than whether some combination of these people will be prepared to follow New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu’s instruction, offered in a column earlier in the week in The New York Times, that Republicans must somehow unite to push Trump aside and return to modernised versions of traditional Republican values and positions, lest they lose yet again at the presidential level, as well as all the way down through the rest of the ballot.

Sununu is genuine Republican royalty — his father was also governor of the “Granite State” as well as having been chief-of-staff to president George HW Bush. Accordingly, the younger Sununu’s views presumably should carry some weight with voters, even if he chose not to join in the race for the White House.

But, significantly, if the polls are even close to accurate, even with the possibility Trump will be found guilty in a trial on one or another of the indictments issued against him during the primaries, Trump still seems to be retaining the ability to hypnotise Republican voters into supporting him. That would appear to matter more than winning the actual election.

This is a long road yet to be followed. DM