September 26, 2023
On Wednesday at 9 p.m., seven Republican presidential candidates will square off in the second primary debate ahead of the 2024 presidential race.
The debate will be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California and is expected to last about two hours. FOX Business commentator Stuart Varney and FOX News' Dana Perino will moderate alongside Univision's Ilia Calderón.
Seven candidates have qualified and confirmed that they will participate in Wednesday night's debate. These include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, did not poll high enough to qualify for the debate despite attending the first one. Burgum nearly did not qualify, though on Saturday he polled at the minimum eligibility requirement of 3%, Politico reported.
The Republican National Committee lists criteria for participation in this debate. Candidates must have at least 50,000 unique financial donors that are presented to the RNC within 48 hours of the debate. Each qualified candidate must poll at 3% in two national polls or 3% in one national poll and one state poll in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina.
All candidates were required to sign the "Beat Biden" pledge to be eligible for the Republican primary debates. The pledge promises to support whichever Republican candidate wins the party's nomination next spring.
Former President Donald Trump will not attend the second Republican primary debate. Instead, he will host a campaign event with Detroit auto workers, whose union is currently on strike against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep, Chrysler and Ram. (Trump is not pro-union; rather, he hopes to position himself as an ally to blue-collar workers.)
Trump skipped the first Republican primary debate, which was held in Milwaukee in August. Instead, he sat down for a live interview on X, formerly Twitter, with former FOX News anchor Tucker Carlson. Before the first debate, Trump said on his social media company Truth Social that he was skipping the debates because he's beating his rivals in polls.
The debate will broadcast on the FOX Business Network and Univision beginning at 9 p.m. on Wednesday. FOX News will broadcast the debate on TV and online, with programming beginning at 8:30 p.m.
Video streaming platform Rumble, which has partnered with the RNC, will livestream the debate beginning at 8:30 p.m. The site has been criticized for allowing, and sometimes promoting, conspiracy theories, disinformation and far-right extremism, the Associated Press reported.
Eight Republican candidates filled the stage in Milwaukee on Aug. 23, taking aim at one another and at Trump's absence during a two-hour broadcast on FOX News.
DeSantis, who has thus far been viewed as the second-place candidate behind Trump (though Haley has taken second in a recently released poll), did not spend as much time responding to other candidates as he did pushing his platform, though he did criticize Ramaswamy's lack of experience.
Haley, the sole female candidate for the Republican nomination, took particular aim at Ramaswamy for his lack of experience in foreign policy. Pence, the former vice president, was combative during the debate. He did not commit to pardoning Trump if elected, though he didn't say he wouldn't. He did say he supports a national 15-week abortion ban.
Christie got a few sarcastic quips in during the debate, including remarking that Ramaswamy "sounds like ChatGPT." He later spoke on ABC's "This Week" about his belief that the Republican nominee should be someone who can beat a Democratic incumbent. Burgum and Scott did not have many moments to speak at length about their platforms.
The third Republican presidential primary debate will be held in Miami on Nov. 8. The RNC has published more strict criteria that candidates must fulfill in order to participate in the debate. Additional information, including the debate's venue, has not been made public.
