Last Wednesday night, on August 24, the first Primary debate of the 2024 election took place. It featured 8 of the Republican Candidates, all verbally battling it out in front of the entire nation. There were a lot of takeaways from this debate, but I wanted to know what the students of Palisade thought about it.

Some big players in the debate included Florida Governor Ron Desantis, Former Vice President Mike Pence, Ohio Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, plus many more. Notably, this debate excluded former President Donald Trump, who was set to be taken into custody under four felony counts the very next day. 

Battleground topics included January 6th, Donald Trump, Abortion, and the Economy. Many of the candidates took stances on these heavy topics, including Ron Desantis admitting Mike Pence did his job surrounding January 6th, a day which Pence had shamed all who took part in it. Including this, Vivek Ramaswamy played the character of Donald Trump as a cause of the absence of the leading candidate, Vivek took swings at anyone he could and in return, took a couple of punches. I spoke with Owen Bickham, a Junior at PHS, about his thoughts surrounding the debate. He told me, “I think a very contested part of this debate was over Abortion, it was really interesting seeing how a lot of the views were crazy different and almost all seemed to want a compromise of some sort, just something I didn’t expect.”

Just as heard from Owen, we’d love to hear your thoughts on last week’s debate! Check out the comments button below this post to let us know what you think!