Six Republican presidential candidates were in Atlanta over the weekend ahead of the party’s first primary debate on Wednesday.
For 48 hours in a hotel ballroom in Buckhead, attendees at The Gathering heard about what politics would be like if Donald Trump wasn’t running for president or running away with the primary. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was the only one that directly mentioned Trump’s indictments as a potential problem for the party.
“They’re real, and they’re something politically we’re going to have to deal with. And two: His conduct is reprehensible. Doesn’t matter whether it’s criminal or not,” Christie said.
Six candidates spoke in-depth about their policies and plans if they were to win the nomination and the White House. Polling has Trump with more than a majority of both voters nationwide and in Georgia.
The Gathering
The Gathering was hosted by radio host Erick Erickson. Erickson started the night by announcing that Donald Trump wouldn’t be attending and declared that the former president’s recent indictment would not be a big subject of conversation.
Also among the speakers was former Vice President Mike Pence, who faced the ire of Trump supporters by not refusing to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, something he did not have the power to do.
“You know, I always stood loyally by President Donald Trump until my oath to the Constitution required me to do otherwise. But my differences with the president go far beyond that fateful day, and I hope to have a chance to debate them with him,” Pence said. “Sometimes people ask me, ‘How do you envision debating Donald Trump?’ I say, ‘I have debated Donald Trump a thousand times, just not with the cameras on.’ Look, we have real differences about the future of the country as well.”
Also at The Gathering, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who advocated killing suspected cartel members on-site at the Mexican border.
“When you have cartels operating the way they are, they’re operating as akin to foreign terrorist organizations because they’re killing our people. They’re poisoning our people. So we are going to authorize the use of deadly force against the cartels,” he said.
Wednesday’s debate
DeSantis is among the six GOP candidates who qualified and opted to participate in the August 23 debate. He’s scheduled to appear alongside North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum; former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley; former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson; former Vice President Mike Pence; businessman Vivek Ramaswamy; and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, former Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, businessmen Perry Johnson, and radio host Larry Elder were left out of the debate.
The debate will be held at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. Fox News will carry the debate live from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern time.
Donald Trump bowed out of attending Wednesday night’s debate, but he is likely to upstage the other candidates, nonetheless. On Monday, Trump’s lawyers agreed to a $200,000 bond in the former president’s Fulton County election fraud case. Trump says he intends to turn himself in to authorities in Georgia on Thursday.
Despite his mounting legal woes, Trump remains the frontrunner for 2024 for the Republican presidential nomination.
This article appears on Now Habersham through a news partnership with GPB News
