After Donald Trump said late last week that he won't attend Wednesday night’s Republican presidential primary debate, the candidates who will show up have a new challenge: They have to stand out from the competitors on the stage and make the debate count as Trump does his best to suck up all the oxygen by releasing an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
It’s not yet clear where that interview will be released—somewhere online, without the heft of a television network—but if Trump says anything remotely noteworthy, the clip will be played and replayed on all the TV networks and social media platforms. But that’s not the only way Trump has to overshadow the Republican debate. Sometime this week, before Friday at noon, he has to surrender to Georgia authorities for booking after his latest round of criminal charges. He could conceivably do that on Wednesday right before the debate. He could do it on Thursday right after the debate. As much as he might loathe the possibility of having a mugshot and fingerprints taken—and even more so, having his height and weight made public—it’s going to happen sometime this week, making the timing a tool in his media domination kit.
All this is a challenge for Trump’s would-be competitors, some more than others. They have to decide now how much of their attention to focus on the guy who isn’t even on stage with them, and how much to work to take down their competitors in the race for top non-Trump candidate. That decision will be easy for Vivek Ramaswamy: He hopes to get attention equally for defending Trump and tossing out policy ideas that are Trumpian in how little sense they make, or going full 9/11 truther. It will be easy for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is a strong enough debater to lacerate the absent Trump and several of his onstage competitors at the same time. It will be excruciating for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, though.
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DeSantis is already working with the burden of having entered the race as the top challenger to Trump, only to fade out of the gate. His campaign is in enough trouble that he needs a turnaround moment here or he faces the real possibility of being written off. And he’s saddled with the hilariously terrible debate prep advice from his super PAC, which wanted him to defend Trump and attack Ramaswamy. The founder of that super PAC admitted over the weekend that it had been a mistake to leak the advice memo, but it’s too late now. If DeSantis does what it said, he looks like a tool (and standing on a stage with Christie, he opens himself up to being the next Marco Rubio).
While DeSantis has the hardest job on the stage, Mike Pence is a close runner-up there, if not in the polls. Pence has been painfully trying to balance the fact that he owes his national profile to Trump with Trump having knowingly put his life at risk. That this is a difficult thing for Pence to balance tells you a lot about both Pence and today’s Republican Party. Then again, it would have been incredibly difficult for Pence to be on a stage with Trump as he’d likely take in-person insults from the man he so assiduously sucked up to for more than four years. Really, Pence’s presence in this race hints at some kind of humiliation fetish.
Former South Carolina governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley will presumably continue trying to present herself as a right-wing heir to Trump, with a fresh and positive face and none of the baggage. She’ll be competing for that lane with Sen. Tim Scott, but to what end? There’s no evidence so far that the Republican primary electorate is looking for anything like that.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson will also be on the stage. It remains to be seen if anyone will notice their presence. For that matter, it remains to be seen if anyone will come out of the week seriously believing the debate mattered in this primary at all.