A day after Republicans suffered a string of off-year election defeats, five of the party’s presidential hopefuls barreled through a substantive yet hostile primary debate on Wednesday, clashing over policy and with each other in a competition for second place behind the absentee frontrunner, Donald Trump.
On stage in Miami, the debate was dominated by foreign questions about the Israel-Hamas war, immigration and China. But the contenders also decried the losses in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia, warning that 2024 could end with the re-election of Joe Biden if they were unsuccessful in breaking Trump’s dominance of the Republican primary.
