Voters who
watched the debate
tonight saw comparatively
little of Florida Governor Ron
DeSantis early on
and said
much of the initial focus
and criticism was directed toward
first time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Who also got considerable time to answer.
Here's a portion
which seemed to set the tone.
Ramaswamy and former Vice President Pence
Vivek, you recently said
a president can't do everything.
Well, I got news for you, Vivek.
I've been in the hallway.
I've been in the West Wing,
a president in the United States.
Has to confront
every crisis facing America.
I will put our nation back on the path
to growth and prosperity
and restore fiscal responsibility.
This isn't that complicated, guys.
Unlock American energy.
Drill frack.
Burn coal. Embrace nuclear.
Put people back to work.
I no longer paying them
more to stay at home.
Reform the US Fed that stabilize the U.S.
dollar and go to war.
The only war that I will declare as U.S.
President will be the war
on the federal administrative state.
That is the source
of those toxic regulations.
Acting like a wet blanket on the economy.
So I'm not sure I exactly understood
Mike Pence's comment,
but I'll let you all pass that out
for me. It's pretty simple.
That's something a U.S.
president can do with focus
and I'll deliver on it.
Let me explain it to you.
Let me explain it to you. If I can.
I'll go slower this time.
You know,
I sometimes struggle with the record.
I was
I was a House conservative leader
before it was cool.
I balanced budgets
and cut taxes when I was governor.
I mean, look, Joe
Biden has weakened
this country at home and abroad.
Now is not the time
for on the job training
We don't need to bring in a rookie.
We don't need to bring in people
without experience.
Now that everybody's
gotten their memorized
pre-prepared slogans out of the way,
we can actually have a real discussion.
Now,
that the reality
and the fact of the matter
is that one of yours?
No, not really, Mike.
Actually,
we're just going to have
some fun tonight.
And the reality is,
you have a bunch of people,
professional politician,
wins, super PAC puppets
following slogans
handed over to them by their 400 page
super PACs last week.
The real choice we face in this primary
is this
do you want a super PAC puppet
or do you want a patriot
who speaks the truth?
Do you want incremental reform,
which is what you're hearing about,
or do you want revolution?
Okay.
And I stand on the side of
the American Revolution,
some of what the Republican candidate
said tonight in Milwaukee.
Joining me here,
CNN senior political commentator
David Axelrod, CNN's John
King and Abby
Phillip, also
CNN political
commentator, analyst for Griffin,
Scott Jennings, and David Urban.
Let's just go around
kind of first impressions,
David Irving, let's start with you.
Well, you know,
I think tonight proves
that you don't need Donald Trump
to be a debate to have a shit
show there, right?
So, I mean, it was a complete trainwreck
I think after hours,
I think the moderates cable,
the moderators, I think
do a great job controlling the crowd.
I think, you know,
a lot of the candidates
step stepping on one another.
You know,
I don't remember which candidate said
the American people
don't want to hear this.
They want to hear people argue.
They want to hear policies.
They want your ideas.
So the chance to put things forward
and I think
a lot of the folks did a great disservice
to their own candidacies by just,
you know,
talking too much about things
that don't matter.
I want to talk directly to people.
I think the big winner tonight
was a big Ramaswamy
who kind of took up most of the time of
the debate.
Scott, I think
what surprised me most was Nikki
Haley supplanting
Chris Christie
as the principal
anti-Trump foil in this primary.
I did not expect that.
But she came out
I think she was the first candidate
to go after Trump.
She went after him on a couple of issues.
You know,
she's she's
probably the most polished
politician in the field.
And it showed
I mean, she was ready
for the debate stage.
I thought the st is held his own.
And by the way, we're going to show
we're going to show a lot of the debate,
a lot of the clips in the exchanges,
and we'll show that in a minute.
But I will just quickly go around.
I thought DeSantis held his own
and I thought
Ramaswamy had some interesting moments,
although his act to me
wore thin as the night wore on.
I mean,
everybody loves the 38 year old rich guy
who says, you know, it's
not that complicated.
I mean, of course
it's just being president of this
of the free world.
I mean, it's not that complicated.
I thought everybody else was
honestly a non-factor.
Chris Christie was flat.
Tim Scott was a senator,
which is not great in a debate format.
Bergman, Eisa.
God bless them.
I don't, you know,
but but I think Haley and oh,
and Mike Pence far up cake.
This coverage tonight
that was
my sense was Nikki
Haley was the winner of the night.
I think if you're trying to pull
for the sort of alternative to Trump
who can get mainstream Republicans
and win a general election she did that.
I think she really took Vivek
to the woodshed on foreign policy
and that it's not easy
to be the leader of the free world.
Pence surprised me
and he shouldn't
because I worked for Pence
and he's the most experienced
in terms of debates on a debate stage
against Tim Kaine, against Vice
President Harris.
I actually think that Vivek Ramaswamy
sort of
smugness and sort of antagonistic
approach brought out this
righteous indignation and pence
that you don't always see.
He can sometimes fall flat.
So I, I would expect
Romney saw that in that under his skin,
he got under his skin.
I think you'll see a bump for Vivek
from the dissatisfied supporters,
but I think you'll see
a bump for Nikki Haley.
I thought that
there was so much theatrics on the stage
and some of that is intentional.
It seems to me
that so many of the candidates
and including all the ones
that we were just talking about,
they needed to prove tonight
that they were fighters.
And so they had to pick someone
to fight with a lot of them.
Picked Vivek Ramaswamy
because he's sort of the newbie
and he does have this sort of smugness
that apparently rubs
Mike Pence really the wrong way.
But people
without Trump on that stage
really needed to show
that they could put up a fight
and give as good as they can take.
And that seemed to me
to be the big takeaway.
And I was also, like Alyssa said,
a little bit surprised because Pence
that's not really his demeanor.
But talking to his advisers
coming into this debate,
I could sense that
they were preparing him
to really take it to some folks.
And I think we saw him do that.
Mike Pence
spent four years with somebody
who said it's not complicated
and now he's stuck on the stage
next to somebody else.
So maybe that's
why he's so annoyed at it now.
Look,
the biggest question
is, can somebody take the party away
from Donald Trump?
He was not there tonight,
but Donald Trump is the far away,
far away. Far away, far away, far away.
I could go on frontrunner,
no frontrunner with the lead that he has
right now has ever been beat.
Now, anything could happen.
But I think the proof
they're watching Ramaswamy
who is slogan after slogan after slogan.
There's not a lot of depth there.
Maybe he fills that in
as the campaign goes on.
Give him the benefit of the doubt.
But the establishment politicians
were so frustrated by him,
just like they were frustrated
by Donald Trump in 2016.
He was essentially Trump's
fill in tonight in that stage.
And the reaction in the room
tells you
it is going to be very difficult
to take the party away from Donald Trump.
That's what every one of those candidates
is trying to do.
Ramaswamy was his proxy tonight
and the crowd loved it.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I would have to say that,
you know,
people ask
beforehand, was it a gamble for Trump
not to be there?
I don't think it was a gamble.
But if it was a gamble,
he won big tonight.
I think because of what John said.
He is in control of this race.
And the only way
that he can lose this race
if is if someone consolidates
all the rest of the party behind them.
Ron DeSantis,
his whole candidacy was premised on that.
He was that guy
and he's been sliding consistently
since he got into the race.
This was supposed to be his chance
to reignite his supporters.
I think he had some,
you know,
energetic, well-rehearsed answers
to some things
whenever he got into sticky
wickets, though,
he looked weak and equivocating
and like a politician.
And, you know,
one of the strengths of a Ramaswamy and a
and a Trump
is that they're not politic
And so I don't I agree.
Nikki Haley,
I thought he had an excellent night,
Drew Strong. But but I do think that
for Trump's project,
I think they come out of there.
They're no less divided
than they were before.
And there's no one emerging
as his principal opponent.
Let's take a look at the Nikki
Haley conversation
with the background, the Swami,
because that definitely got
a lot of attention tonight.
The American president needs to have
moral clarity.
They need to know the difference
between right and wrong.
They need to know the difference
between good and evil.
When you look at the situation
with Russia and Ukraine, here
you have a pro-American country
that was invaded by a thug.
So when you want to talk
about what has been given to Ukraine,
less than three
and a half
percent of our defense
budget has been given to Ukraine.
If you look at the percentages per GDP,
11 of the European
countries have given more than the US.
Ukraine is the first line of defense
for us.
And the problem
that Vivek doesn't understand is
he wants to hand Ukraine to Russia.
He wants to let China eat Taiwan.
He wants to go and stop funding Israel.
You don't do that to friends.
What you do instead is
you have the backs of your friends.
Ukraine. It's a front line of defense.
Putin has said
if Russia wants
Russia takes Ukraine, Poland
and the Baltics are next.
That's a world war
we're trying to prevent war.
Look at what Putin did today.
He killed four Ghosn
When I was at the U.N.,
the Russian ambassador suddenly died.
This guy is a murderer,
and you are choosing a murderer over a
man in
the best way
possible.
First of all, personal.
Mr. Armstrong, to you in 30 seconds.
Mr.
Assad,
I wish you well in your future career
on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.
But the fact of the matter
is, Raytheon and Boeing came off of it.
But you've been pushing this line.
You've been pushing this line
all week to go and find Israel you want.
Okay, let me address that.
I'm glad you brought that up.
Going give
you could address each of those
right now.
This is
the false warnings
of a professional politician.
There you have it. You're right.
So the reality is, let's say
you have no foreign policy experience
and then saying,
you know, what does those experience?
That was a moment.
I mean, that was a real moment.
And look,
Nikki Haley's whole mantra is
I don't back down to bullies.
And she had to show that in that moment
that she could come back at Vivek
and frankly, talk louder than him, which,
you know,
and so I can say that
as a woman
sometimes that's not always
the easiest thing to do.
But but she's raising
something about the policy here
that is really an issue for Ramaswamy,
which is that
he is putting on the table policies
that even in this sort of America
First Republican Party,
there is not a lot of support for
this idea that she raised about
kind of pulling back
from support for Israel
is not popular among Republican voters.
And sometimes it seems like
he puts those things on the table
just to say,
well, I'm
going to throw out the idea
that no one's going to talk about.
But on the debate stage,
that's when you get called
out for things like that.