Opinion | The Trump-Free Debate That’s All About Trump

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I’m Michelle Goldberg, and I’m an opinion columnist for The New York Times.

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So tonight is the first Republican debate of the 2024 campaign cycle. Going into tonight’s debate, a lot of the drama was about whether Trump would show up or not. But I think that he’s going to be the center of gravity almost no matter what.

By all indications, what the Republican base wants is more Donald Trump. But the leaders of the party see Donald Trump as a uniquely vulnerable candidate in a general election. And so you have, I think, a leadership of the party that wants an alternative and a base that isn’t yet convinced that an alternative is even necessary.

And so the candidates have to do something to change the way that the Republican base relates to Trump, you know. And because so much of the relationship between the base and Trump is about him as this icon of invulnerable dominance, they have to do something to interrupt that.

And they’re not going to do that. Nobody is going to do that, I think, by arguing about the issues, by showing that Trump isn’t a true conservative. But there’s potentially an opportunity to do that by making Trump look weak, making him look feckless, making him look old and afraid.

And there’s two candidates whose position vis-a-vis Trump is going to be particularly dramatic. One is Chris Christie, who’s running as the anti-Trump candidate. He’s the one person who has learned the lesson that the contest with Trump is less about issues, and it’s much more about displays of dominance.

And so he is trying to embarrass Trump. He calls Trump a grifter. They’ve had a lot of back and forths, kind of juvenile back and forth, particularly in Trump’s part, about Chris Christie’s weight.

And Chris Christie, like Trump, has this kind of swaggering Northeastern tough guy affect and wants to show that if you are willing to take on Trump directly and show that you are unintimidated by him, that he will reveal himself as a much weaker figure than at least his most ardent supporters believe him to be.

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So while you’ll see some of the other candidates criticize Donald Trump for January 6 or for taking home classified documents, they will definitely preface it by saying that the Justice Department is out of control and that Donald Trump is being targeted unfairly.

Chris Christie is going to be saying that, no, Donald Trump is a criminal. Donald Trump is a traitor. Donald Trump deserves what he’s getting. And that’s not a message that I think most Republican voters want to hear. But it will be interesting to see whether he can open the way for other candidates to make more subtle critiques of Trump or more nuanced critiques of Trump.

And then the other person who I think people are going to be watching is Ron DeSantis. There was a time at the beginning of this year when Ron DeSantis seemed like the great hope of the Republican Party. And then he got on the campaign trail and just absolutely fizzled.

His poll numbers have been falling. His donors have been expressing their frustration. He’s had this high profile campaign shakeup. And so I think that for Ron DeSantis, if he’s going to turn his campaign around, tonight will be one of the last chances in which he can do that.

Based on some documents that were put online by a super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis, that the Times has reported on, he’s going to defend Trump when Chris Christie goes after him, which I don’t doubt is going to go over really well with this audience.

But if Ron DeSantis refuses to take on Trump directly and just kind of defends him from Chris Christie’s attacks, he will ingratiate himself to the right wing base. But he still won’t make a case for himself as the nominee because he will be showing himself to be subservient to Trump. I mean, he’s sort of doing what the Republican Party as a whole has been doing since 2015 really, which is hoping that something else will come along and make Trump go away.

I think the stakes for the debate are twofold. One is how much control the Republican Party can exert over this process, because if they can’t even get their front runner to show up to a debate, I think it just underscores the degree to which Donald Trump has been able to hijack the party and marginalize the rest of its leadership.

And then the other question is whether they can actually come up with a viable non-Trump candidate or whether the field will continue to be splintered in a way that benefits Trump even more than it benefited him in 2016 because his lead is already so overwhelming.

And so I wouldn’t expect any substantive wrestling with the issues at this debate. Although there might be some newsmaking disagreements about abortion bans, or the scope of abortion bans.

But this is fundamentally pro-wrestling, right. This is fundamentally about performance and peacocking and dominance. And I think that tonight’s debate will be the most high profile forum in which we’re going to see how the Republican Party handles the elephant in the room. And that’s what people are going to be watching for.