In competing events, Trump and his 8 challengers offer split-screen view of GOP's future

Donald Trump and eight of his challengers in the 2024 Republican presidential primary spoke to voters Wednesday night in a split-screen duel for the future of the GOP, with the field splintering over how to address the reason the former president is no longer in office.

Trump, in a 45-minute interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson released five minutes before the first GOP presidential debate began airing on Carlson's former network, forcefully defended his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol that triggered criminal charges against him. He again argued the 2020 election should have been overturned.

A majority of his opponents on the debate stage in Milwaukee agreed that Vice President Mike Pence was right in refusing Trump's request to overturn the results of the 2020 election — a move that coincided with a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol — but also urged voters and the party to move on from the issue, characterizing a focus on 2020 as an assured loss in 2024.

The competing events, with Trump refusing to share a debate stage with his opponents, and his challengers seeking to chip away at Trump's massive polling lead without him in the room, showcased the dueling interests party leaders must navigate in 2024 and underscored the divisions that still exist over the 2020 election.

Trump in his interview again falsely claimed he won Wisconsin's presidential election and alleged all absentee voting was rigged — a message that directly contradicts one his party's leaders are trying to spread to ramp up early voting among Republicans.

"Anytime you have mail-in ballots, you're going to have massive cheating in your elections," Trump said, a claim that is not supported by evidence.

Trump also argued Pence, who was vice president in 2020, had the right to send electoral votes "back to the legislatures to be rechecked," when asked by Carlson what he thinks of Pence criticizing Trump now.

Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum all said the former vice president did the right thing in rebuffing Trump.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis refused to give a yes or no answer but ultimately said Pence "did his duty."

“This election is not about Jan. 6 of 2021. It’s about Jan. 20 of 2025, when the next president is going to take office," DeSantis said.

More: Six of eight Republican presidential candidates at the Milwaukee debate would support Donald Trump as nominee even if he's convicted

Christie took the opportunity to blast Trump and DeSantis for his tepid support.

"Mike Pence stood for the Constitution, and he deserves not grudging credit — he deserves our thanks as Americans for putting his oath of office and the Constitution of the United States before personal, political and unfair pressure. And the argument that we need to have in this party before we can move on to the issues … is we have to dispense with the person who said we need to suspend the Constitution to put forward his political career," Christie said. "Mike Pence said no, and he deserves credit for it."

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said Trump was the “best president of the 21st century,” accusing Christie of running a campaign of based on “vengeance and grievance” against one man.

More: Fact check recap: What the Republican hopefuls got right and wrong in the first debate

Of Ramaswamy, Christie said: “You make me laugh, because you sit here talking about how you want to stand up for the rule of law and law and order. … I am not going to bow to anyone, when we have a president of the United States who disrespects the Constitution.”

In an average of national polls provided by FiveThirtyEight, Trump is leading the field by more than 30 percentage points over the next most popular candidate, DeSantis. In Wisconsin, however, recent polling by Marquette University Law School shows Trump in a neck-and-neck race with DeSantis.

Without Trump at Wednesday's debate, Ramaswamy took most of the fire as his opponents viewed him as most likely to get a bump in polling following the debate.

Abortion issue divides the Republican candidates

The candidates overall were divided over how to address abortion, an issue that has energized Democrats since the overturning of Roe v. Wade last summer.

DeSantis said he would “support the cause of life” as president, but did not stake a clear position on whether he would support a six-week federal abortion ban like the state law he signed in Florida in April. Burgum, holding a pocket-sized Constitution, said that while he is pro-life, he believes a federal abortion ban would violate the 10th Amendment, which delegates to the states powers not laid out in the Constitution.

But the biggest clash on abortion came between Pence and Haley.

Republicans “need to stop demonizing” the issue, Haley said, adding that she is “unapologetically pro-life.”

“Unelected justices didn't need to decide something this personal,” she continued, arguing that in order to pass a federal abortion ban, the country should “find consensus.”

Pence shot back: “Consensus is the opposite of leadership.”

"It's not a states-only issue, it's a moral issue,” he said.

The former Indiana governor said there should be a "minimum standard in every state of the nation," throwing out 15 weeks as a benchmark. He cited polling that found a majority of Americans would support a 15-week ban — but Haley argued a majority of members of Congress do not.

Nikki Haley chides Republicans on economy

When asked about turning around the economy, Haley directed her criticism not on Biden, but on Republicans. She was the first candidate Wednesday night to attack the former president.

"The truth is that Biden didn't do this to us, our Republicans did this to us when they passed that $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill," Haley said. She name-checked DeSantis, Scott and Pence before attacking Trump: "Donald Trump added $8 trillion to our debt and our kids are never going to forgive us for this."

At one point, Ramaswamy interjected during a discussion on climate change, calling it "a hoax" and claiming "more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate.” He attacked the other candidates on stage as being "bought and paid for."

Christie shot back: "I have had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like Chat GPT," calling Ramaswamy's description of himself as a skinny guy with a funny last name a reference to Obama. "I'm afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur."

The eight Republicans largely agreed on educational policy, advocating for school choice and giving parents more say in school curricula. Burgum said he made a "priority of protecting women's sports in North Dakota, and Haley similarly said "biological boys do not belong in girls' locker rooms" — continuing Republican attacks on transgender students participating in single-sex sports.

Ramaswamy, who has proposed completely dismantling the Dept. of Education, called education "the Civil Rights issue of our time" as he called for more parental involvement in children's education.

“Education starts with the family," Ramaswamy said, "and the nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.”

Jessie Opoien of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: GOP debate, Trump interview put Republican split-screen in full view