The former president’s GOP challengers attacked him on multiple issues. Trump skipped the debate and fielded tough questions from voters.
President Donald Trump on Jan. 10 held a town hall in Iowa as his two leading rivals debated in his shadow.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took shots at each other at a debate hosted by CNN in Des Moines, Iowa. The two other contenders for the nomination, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, failed to meet the heightened requirements to take part in the debate.
Also in Des Moines, President Trump fielded questions from voters in a town hall hosted by Fox News, opting again to skip the debate and upstage the competition with counterprogramming.
The competing events came only five days ahead of the Iowa caucuses, the first major political contest of the 2024 campaign season.
Despite a quickly narrowing field, which has shrunk from about 20 contenders down to only five, President Trump maintains a commanding 51-point lead over the second-best candidate, according to an average of polls maintained by RealClearPolitics.
Here are three takeaways from the competing political events.
Haley, DeSantis Take on Trump
Throughout the night, both Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis were called to speak critically of President Trump, who is far ahead of both of them in the polling.
At the start of the debate, Mr. DeSantis said—as he often has—that the former president is “running to pursue his issues.” Ms. Haley soon said that she doesn’t think the 45th president “is the right president to go forward,” touting herself as “a new generational leader.”
Mr. Tapper, one of CNN’s moderators, noted that President Trump had not accepted their invitation to take part in the pre-caucus debate. The former leader of the United States instead held a town hall elsewhere in Des Moines that aired on Fox News.
After citing former Vice President Mike Pence’s claim that the former president elevated himself above the U.S. Constitution on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Tapper challenged Ms. Haley on whether she sees that founding document similarly to President Trump, who at one point was her boss when she was the country’s ambassador to the United Nations.
By Nathan Worcester and Joseph Lord
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