MILWAUKEE — Eight Republicans who want to be president of the United States shared a stage Wednesday night in Wisconsin for their party’s first debate ahead of next year’s election.

The two-hour televised debate, the first held by Republicans in this election cycle, featured spirited exchanges about what one of the moderators called “the elephant who is not in the room” – the absent party front-runner, former President Donald Trump, who decided he is so far ahead in the polls he did not need to be on the stage.

Some of the contenders, such as Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, deemed Trump disqualified from serving again because of what they said was his disrespect for the Constitution, as well as the 91 felony counts he now faces.

Trump is set to surrender for arrest and booking in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday in connection with the fourth indictment, which accuses him of racketeering and interference in trying to upend his 2020 reelection loss in the southern state.

“The American people need to know that the president asked me to put him over the Constitution,” demanding he refuse to oversee the congressional certification that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the 2020 election, Pence told the audience in the Fiserv Forum.

Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley declared, “Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We can’t win a general election that way.”

However, political novice Vivek Ramaswamy, rising in the polls, stood by Trump, saying he believed he was “the best president of the 21st century.”

Other Republican presidential contenders, while acknowledging Pence’s role on Jan. 6, 2021, in rejecting Trump’s demand to stop congressional certification of Biden’s victory, described the prosecution of Trump as the political weaponization of the Justice Department overseen by Biden.

Source: VOA

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