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Donald Trump’s rivals agreed Wednesday that Republicans should look past the former president.
But the iconic image of the week will be his fourth arrest this year, this time at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta. Many of his alleged co-conspirators have had mug shots released.
Talking about Trump was a chore for many on the stage at the first Republican presidential primary debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday.
“The more time we spend doing this, the less time they can talk about issues you want to talk about,” Bret Baier, one of the Fox News moderators, told the debate audience in an effort to quiet their booing of the anti-Trump former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
“So, let’s just get through this section,” Baier told them.
Christie had been trying to argue “someone’s got to stop normalizing” Trump’s conduct. But he was interrupted by the booing and also by Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and political neophyte who declared Trump “the best president of the 21st century.”
Note: Ramaswamy made it sounds like a massive compliment, but that’s really only four presidents, two of whom are Democrats and one of whom is George W. Bush, who barely feels like he would fit into today’s GOP.
Plus, I cannot figure out how Ramaswamy will pivot from his lavish praise for Trump to convincing the former president’s supporters to back him instead.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis initially tried to dodge a question on if he agreed that then-Vice President Mike Pence did the right thing by not obeying Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election results.
“Mike did his duty. I’ve got no beef with him,” was the highest praise DeSantis would allow for Pence’s profile…
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