Trump’s Absence From the GOP Debate Finally Mattered

SIMI VALLEY, California—On Wednesday evening at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president again debated in the sizable shadow of the absent front-runner.

Like last month’s debate, it was a messy affair filled with cross-talk and personal insults that likely gave the four-time indicted former president many things to smile about. Amid that chaos, though, were a handful of small moments that, if replicated a lot more on a lot bigger stages, might finally start to crack the veneer of invincibility surrounding Donald Trump.

Specifically, the candidates on the stage finally began to launch frontal attacks on Trump for not bothering to face his opponents. It was cowardly, they argued, and disrespectful of Republican voters. “Donald Trump is missing in action. He should be on this stage tonight,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the closest competitor to Trump in national polling. “He owes it to you to defend his record, where they added $7.8 trillion to the debt.”

After the debate, in the spin room, DeSantis communications director Andrew Romeo called the response his candidate’s best moment of the night (even though former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie gave pretty much the exact same answer moments before DeSantis got his chance).

And after the debate, commentary about Trump’s absence was one of the most common lines of discussion in the spin room.

Defeated 2022 Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a Trump supporter in attendance, was peppered with questions about his absence by such varied outlets as Fox News and a child reporter from Kids Scoop Media, who asked pointedly: “When do you think that President Trump should start showing up to these debates and answering the hard questions in front of the nation?”

It’s a question that the DeSantis surrogates were also eager to raise. “[The audience] saw that Donald Trump is too afraid to step on the stage and [defend his record] and I think that’s going to be a theme going forward for the campaign,” said Romeo.

The theme was echoed by former Trump 2020 press communications director Erin Perrine—who is now the communications director for DeSantis’ super PAC. “Gov. DeSantis can stand up there and take it all. He can take the heat better than anybody and he never backs down from a fight,” Perrine said. “You know who backed down from the fight tonight: Donald Trump when he didn’t show up to this debate.”

Unfortunately for DeSantis, Team Trump has a readymade and pretty stinging rebuke to these taunts: Have fun at the kids’ table.

“These guys were here on the D-list debate fighting amongst each other,” Lake offered.

As Lake further noted, DeSantis has fallen to fifth place in one recent poll of the critical first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary, even as he’s managed to stop flatlining in polls of the Iowa caucuses thanks in part to a statewide barnstorming campaign. Lake went on to describe the evening as a “nightmare of a boring, horrible debate.”

Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita went further. “I think the whole thing was a complete and utter shit show. Period, end quote,” he said.

On this score they’re not wrong: The debate was a mess, punctuated by sloppy, incomprehensible fights and large segments of cross-talk.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, in attendance as a surrogate for President Joe Biden, also deployed Lake’s analogy, albeit with a bit more generosity, calling it a “B-list” contest.

“There was no takeaway of merit. This was a nothingburger. You will forget it,” Newsom told reporters. “In the next 72 hours, none of you will be talking about this debate.”

That analysis is backed up by the fact that the two leading alternative candidates, DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley—who had yet another strong debate, even amid the chaos—are still sputtering well below 20 percent in the two earliest states.

Indeed, the biggest group of supporters to any candidate Wednesday night had gathered at the entrance of the Reagan library with 10-foot MAGA flags to support the one who wasn’t even there.