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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Lois Beckett in Simi Valley, California

Crosstalk and weak zingers hand win to absent Trump at Republican debate

A white woman and a Black man stand at neighboring lecterns on a brightly lit stage. The woman is speaking, with both palms raised, as the man listens.
The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley had a rebuttal ready when the South Carolina senator Tim Scott criticized an expensive purchase. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

It’s hard to pick the low point of a debate that dissolved frequently into incoherent crosstalk and included former vice-president Mike Pence, a Christian conservative who has famously said he would never dine alone with a woman other than his wife, attempting to make a joke about his sex life. (“My wife isn’t a member of the teachers’ union, but I gotta admit I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years,” he said.)

In a debate conducted not far from Ronald Reagan’s grave, seven GOP presidential candidates shouted and sniped at each other for two hours without producing a single standout moment.

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