Fox News, flipping the bird at the concept of “public interest,” hoarded its feed so effectively that non-subscribers to the cable channel were thwarted in their efforts to watch live the first debate among US Republican presidential candidates of the 2024 election cycle.
Some hardy bootleg YouTubers attempted to place us viewers from around the world virtually inside the Milwaukee auditorium, via second-hand livestream. One channel found its feed blocked even before the start of the debate and sent its viewers to another channel – the one that I was trying, as my host announced.
My chosen channel worked OK for the first few minutes, but onscreen gibberish and interminable freezes soon took over; apparently the wily engineers at Fox had messed with the signal and shut us down.
Since the “elephant in the room,” former president Donald Trump had chosen not to show his face in Milwaukee, that meant that another high-sounding term, “inclusive,” applied neither on-stage nor off.
This writer would not be caught dead giving a red cent to Faux News for a cable subscription. Fortunately, both the Washington Post and the New York Times were carrying real-time running commentary and my subscriptions to both were paid up.
Asia Times thus is in a position to tell readers who seek insights on the foreign policy positions of the non-Trump GOP candidates that – in a welcome change – the debate participants actually did discuss foreign policy. (That’s by no means always the case in these debates.)
‘The candidates pledged to get tough on China but divided over the wisdom of the United States continuing to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.’
A quick summary from the Post of the highlights regarding the top two foreign policy issues:
The candidates pledged to get tough on China but divided over the wisdom of the United States continuing to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
In more revealing detail, here’s what Post reporter Maeve Reston had to say about four of the Trump successor wannabes who are in the middle or top ranks in terms of current polling numbers:
Former vice president Mike Pence and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley had very strong nights tonight — and one reason for that is that is that they were able to play off of entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy’s inexperience in foreign policy to draw attention to their respective experiences on the world stage.
In a series of exchanges that were some of the most memorable of the night, they both spoke fluently and passionately about the foreign policy issues facing the United States, while casting Ramaswamy as a completely out of his depth.
Both of them have been outraged by some of Ramaswamy’s foreign policy proposals like his suggestion that the US will no longer need to promise protection to Taiwan from an invasion by China after it achieves semiconductor independence from China. They also have targeted his pledge to scale back US military aid to Israel after 2028 (by claiming that he would build alliances with other nations in the Middle East, which many foreign policy experts view as a naive position given the level of conflict in that region).
Onstage Wednesday night, Haley criticized [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis’s past characterization of the war in Ukraine as a territorial dispute. A president, she said, needs “moral clarity” to decide the differences between good and evil, right and wrong.
Both Haley and Pence unloaded on Ramaswamy for stating that the US should not continue giving military aid to Ukraine, a country she described as a pro-American country that was invaded by a thug. “Ukraine is the first line of defense for us,” she said, explaining the danger of an emboldened Russia that is allied with China.
“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,” she said. “What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends.”
“You [Ramaswamy] have no foreign policy experience and it shows,” Haley said to the cheers of the audience.
Here are some more choice details on Ukraine, China, climate change, US debt and the immigration/Mexican border issues:
Ukraine and China:
In contrast to Haley’s pro-Ukraine passion (she called Vladimir Putin a “murderer” and was merciless in her criticism of Ramaswamy for defending Putin), one of the lower-polling candidates permitted to join the debate, Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, theorized that “what we have going on in Ukraine is an example of when deterrence fails. What we have is an example of Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the fact that he greenlighted Putin moving into Ukraine.”
That elicited an online fact check from Julian E Barnes, national security reporter for the Times, who wrote:
This is false. The White House in fact repeatedly warned Russia against invading Ukraine. In 2021, the director of the CIA, William J Burns, traveled to Moscow, informing President Vladimir Putin of Russia about American intelligence concerning Russia’s war plans and cautioning him about the consequences of an attack.
Some military analysts said putting troops in Ukraine might have deterred the invasion, but the Republican candidates debating on Wednesday night said they would not send troops to Ukraine.
The Times’s Charles Homans notes that it’s “worth remembering that Haley, during her time as United Nations ambassador in 2017 and 2018, was particularly outspoken in her support for Ukraine.”
Haley said, as Times reporter Alan Rappeport paraphrases her, that “a relatively small amount of the US military budget is going to Ukraine and that letting Russia win the war would be a victory for China, which will ‘eat Taiwan.’ Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, says that defending Ukraine is an effort to prevent a world war.”
Rappeport adds that “Pence makes a forceful case that he wants to help the Ukrainians push Russia out of their country and stop Putin from extending the old Soviet sphere of influence. ‘The United States needs to stand against authoritarianism,’ Pence says.”
According to Homans, “Christie and Pence, the only two candidates to visit Ukraine, are making interestingly different arguments for continued US support for the war effort there. Christie is making a moral case for the war; Pence is making a realpolitik case.”
With the topical shift to China, writes the Times’s Rappeport. “Burgum begins by criticizing Biden for sending top officials to Beijing and calling for stronger military support for Taiwan.”
The reporter adds that Tim Scott “declines to answer the question” about China. Indeed, we heard precious little about foreign policy from the South Carolina senator, who’s been seen as the Mr Nice Guy among the candidates. (At least he didn’t make it up, unlike what Haley claimed was the case with Ramaswamy.)
Climate change:
Ramaswamy once again was an outlier when the moderators raised the issue of climate change. “Let us be honest as Republicans — I’m the only person on the stage who isn’t bought and paid for, so I can say this — that climate change is a hoax,” he said, adding, “And so the reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.”
Competing with Pence and Haley for the title of grownup in the room, Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor (low-middle polling, so far), spoke his piece about the millionaire entrepreneur Ramaswamy: “I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT.”
Haley also rejected the hoax conspiracy theory but attempted to shift much of the blame away from the United States. “Is climate change real?” she asked. “Yes, it is. But if you want to go and really change the environment, then we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions.”
Lisa Friedman of the New York Times in one of her online instant comments offered context: “China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases,” she acknowledged. “Yet while many Republicans like Ms Haley say the solution to climate change rests on the shoulders of countries like China, few have put forward solutions for convincing major emerging economies to cut emissions…. Neither the United States nor China will act more rapidly unless the other does, too.”
Mexico/immigration:
From Times reporter Rappeport:
Christie says that immigration policy is about enforcing the law and making sure that people are not in the country while others are waiting to enter legally. He accuses China of sending chemicals to drug cartels that create fentanyl and says stopping them is a priority.
Pence accuses Biden of throwing open the southern border and allowing fentanyl to flow into the United States. Pence says that he negotiated the funding to build the wall.
Scott says he wants to deploy more resources to the southern border to stop the flow of fentanyl.
Asked if he would send US special forces into Mexico to stop drug cartels, DeSantis emphatically says he would do so. “Yes, we reserve the right to operate.”
From the Post’s Hannah Knowles:
Ron DeSantis made sure to work in his promise to leave drug smugglers breaking through the wall at the southern border “stone cold dead.” This is a line he uses over and over on the campaign trail. The embrace of deadly force is one way he is trying to stand out from Trump as his border plan echoes Trump’s.
From Knowles’s colleague Meryl Kornfeld:
Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson is taking a softer stance against Mexico than other candidates, saying he believes that the military should be used to gather intelligence and partner with the neighboring country to stop the flow of drugs across the border. “We cannot be successful going against the cartel unless we are in Mexico as a partner,” he said.
Economy/debt:
The sound of candidates dissecting one another rhetorically was music to the ears of the White House incumbent, who reportedly was watching. (Presumably the White House cable account is paid up.) From Post reporter Meryl Kornfeld:
President Biden, whose “Bidenomics” strategy has been under attack during the debate, shared a clip of former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley critiquing fellow Republicans — naming Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Senator Tim Scott, former vice president Mike Pence and former president Donald Trump — for contributing to the nation’s debt.
“What she said,” Biden wrote on Twitter.
About that elephant:
Candidates’ views of Trump are, of course, important. He’s a loyalty freak and won’t likely tap as his running mate anyone on the stage who’s not all in. And in view of his huge polling advantage, snagging the vice presidency or a cabinet slot is most likely what it’s all about to some or most of these candidates.
Nearly all of the male debaters came to the stage wearing the solid red neckties that Trump had made his trademark, with only Christie playing odd man out in a tie that was correctly red in background but patterned (what a British friend of mine would disdainfully term a “dog vomit” tie). But the proof of the day’s particular pudding should be in the words spoken, and the winner of the title Chief Trump Sycophant has got to be Ramaswamy.
As Times political reporter Jonathan Swan observed partway through the debate:
Ramaswamy is distinguishing himself by effectively serving as a Trump campaign surrogate on the debate stage. The rest of the candidates can be roughly arranged into three categories: Those who criticize Trump without naming him (DeSantis, Haley, Scott). Those who occasionally criticize him (Pence). And those who try to focus a conversation about Trump’s moral failings (Christie, Hutchinson).
If Christie gets a prize, the one I propose is Candidate I’d Most Like to Have a Beer With.
My guess is that both Scott and previous number two DeSantis will show in their polling results some signs of damage from the debate, as neither had very much to say. Pence and, in particular, Haley just might see some upward movement reflecting superior performance.
Asia Times Associate Editor Bradley K Martin grew up in Georgia planning to become president of the United States but in his 20s, deciding that wasn’t such a great idea after all, moved to Asia and switched to journalism.