the republican party, former president trump took a break from courtum appearances to tak questions in a fox news town hall. in this n town hall he said absolutely nothing new. it was the same lies, same talking points, and essentially a rally with questions. let s be very clear, folks, the only normal aspect of tonight s debate was the presence of podiums. the candidates took the stage just after vocal trump critic, former new jersey governor chris christie suspended his campaign refusing to endorse any of his former opponents. in a normal world a re-election losing 91 felony counts facic, twice impeached front-runner who didn t show up to debate at anything would be a prime candidate prime target for any candidate hoping to take the lead, right? that s in normal times. but desantis and haley declined to focus on the elephant not in the room. instead they saved their most ruthless barbs for each other. we need to stand up for the people and not bow down to woke corporati
look at haley and desantis, they re trying to out-trump each other and they both forget trump is still in the race. and so what we see is that all the republican candidates are doubling down on the extreme agenda, whether it is to put medicare, social security, and medicaid at risk, whether it is to continue to go back to failed policies of catering to corporations in the top 1%. so right now is the beginning of a campaign where we get to draw contrast, but at the same time we have to remind voters what we promised, what we did, our vision for the future, and we have to go out and communicate that to the american people, and that s from people who are watching shows like this and people who are at home busting their tails to put food on the table and provide for their families. congressman, it s simone. i hope the people who are busting their tails to provide food for their families also
minutes for that debate, i thint it was jarring for a voter who might want to show up and hear a plan what a haley or desantis administration might look like. i think there were points of that. for those of us who covered 2020 and the democratic primary, the idea you could only have one glancing question and a brief question about health care policy isf completely shocking because we went through debates in 2020 with the democrats that were 30he minutes of deep polic debates on the role of health care and how government should play aca role in that. this is just a completely different primary, one that reallyne functions off of natiol trends, not necessarily the time the candidates spent on the ground in iowa, and these debate stages are so incomplete in the way they are structured simply because trump has taken himself out of it, and none of the other candidates have seemed to adjust their debate stage strategy to account for thafact they re not actually going against each other. they
why? because donald trump at every turn punked them from the very beginning and throughout. the disrespect he showed them by not showing up and just the barbs he would throw in and out. so they were shadow boxing the entire time. you got to the point it was just the two of them on the stage. what did we see? literally, a mealy-mouthed politician in the first 30 seconds of the opening salvo desantis comes out swinging. did it establish a narrative for him, take thatra moment to addrs iowans in the country? came out swinging. and that s because at this point he knows he s in such a desperate situation because in a weird way trump has forced both of them into this box they find themselves. and they re trying to punch themselves out of it, and they
the republican party, former president trump took a break from courtum appearances to tak questions in a fox news town hall. in this n town hall he said absolutely nothing new. it was the same lies, same talking points, and essentially a rally with questions. let s be very clear, folks, the only normal aspect of tonight s debate was the presence of podiums. the candidates took the stage just after vocal trump critic, former new jersey governor chris christie suspended his campaign refusing to endorse any of his former opponents. in a normal world a re-election losing 91 felony counts facic, twice impeached front-runner who didn t show up to debate at anything would be a prime candidate prime target for any candidate hoping to take the lead, right? that s in normal times. but desantis and haley declined to focus on the elephant not in the room. instead they saved their most