Earlier this week, we reported that Donald Trump was skipping the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa. Six presidential rivals showed up and had varying degrees of success and a lot of fireworks. Tucker Carlson in his first televised event since Fox News was tapped to do the interviews at the Family Leadership Summit which was broadcasted by Blaze Media. So how did the candidates perform? Ranked from worst to best, here they are.
Mike Pence
Conventional wisdom might rank Asa Hutchinson’s performance below Pence’s, but Pence had more support to lose than Hutchinson, and Pence did no favors for himself. Pence argued that Ukraine was not persecuting Orthodox Christians for having a different opinion on the war claiming to have taken the word of an influential Ukrainian Orthodox leader. This received the first and most boos of the day in an Iowa-nice crowd, and that’s saying something as Pence was preceded by Hutchinson who will talk about in a moment.
The biggest line of the day was Mike Pence uttering the words, “That’s not my concern.” when Tucker Carlson asked him why he cared about Ukraine more than he did American cities. Mike Pence thought he was pushing back on Tucker Carlson’s argument, but ultimately became a meme in his clumsy attempt.
Tucker Carlson rescued Pence when he said that people died on January 6 by getting Pence to recognize Ashley Babbitt, but Pence maintained that he feared for his life on that day. Pence performed poorly given his capabilities and the support he stood to lose.
Asa Hutchinson
Hutchinson was another candidate who performed poorly but had very little support going in. Hutchinson was grilled on his veto of legislation opposing transgendering children. Asa Hutchinson defended his actions by stating that the bill went too far and infringed on parental rights. He also erroneously argued that puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy were reversible and used this as a standard to delineate and argue that surgeries should be illegal. Asa Hutchinson referred to this issue as not a “real issue” when he said he couldn’t wait to talk about real issues.Â
Tucker Carlson got the biggest applause in the interview when he asked whether Asa Hutchinson was jabbed and then said that he was not.
Tim Scott
Having the dubious honor of going first, Tim Scott had a lot of style, but not much else. He chose to stand and address the audience during the interview, a decision not emulated by the other candidates. He argued employing “Judeo-Christian” values, whatever those are, to argue that the United States should engage in a proxy war to degrade Russia’s military. This did not go over well. While at the time, people didn’t think he did the worst, he clearly finished fourth. And I would argue he did no favors for his campaign as Nikki Haley outperformed him and appeals to the same base of liberal Republicans.
Nikki Haley
Nikki Haley was competent and directed the conversation with Tucker Carlson. That being said, she made no major errors. Sure, she advocated using telehealth to solve homelessness, but she appears competent and substantive even though the conversation lacked the major issues. A known neocon, Tucker Carlson did not press her on Ukraine. She got off comparably easy compared to the morning interviews. Perhaps Tucker had roasted two candidates and decided to show some mercy. Haley helped her campaign and may siphon Scott’s support as a result of her performance. But ultimately, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and this low-risk performance yielded little reward.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I’ve long held skepticism about Vivek Ramaswamy who was not made to answer any tough questions about his history in Big Pharma. He did, however, did a great job communicating. He had the best answer on Ukraine, putting finer points on what peace would look like. He talked about deploying the military on the border.
The problem with Ramaswamy is that he’s a Hindu invoking Christian religion and culture because of its association with America. While the association is not bad, it comes across as inauthentic.
Another standout moment was when he said that censorship led to January 6, which is ironic as he had condemned Trump for it in the past. Authenticity is a major issue with Ramaswamy along with his lack of record and Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis both have records of doing what Ramaswamy talks about.
Ron DeSantis
DeSantis did what he needed to do. He was definitely challenged the most in the afternoon slate. He came on the record opposing intervention in Ukraine citing that it served no discernable national interest for the United States. He began with a question on abortion and talked about how his pro-life convictions were not popular with the Republican donor class.
It’s not usually a good sign when Republicans talk about the environment, but Ron DeSantis did a great job on this question not giving in to the Global Warming scam and instead relating environmental issues to the actual environment.
The biggest applause line, perhaps of any candidate, was when Ron DeSantis said he would have fired Fauci in 2020.
DeSantis meandered on a question on Assange and Snowden, but ultimately his conversation was most tailored to the room: strong on life and strong against Branch Covidianism.
Conclusions
All but 3 Republicans running seem to have the same policy as Biden on Ukraine. In 2016, 70% of the electorate voted for a candidate that did not want the US to involve itself in Syria, the proxy war with Russia at that time. Somehow, the establishment candidates missed this memo on where the Republican Party is currently at.
Trump was not directly attacked. His presence was also not overly missed at the event. This is still being regarded at the biggest Family Leadership Summit yet, and Blaze TV is receiving acclaim for their coverage. Once can only imagine that Trump would have performed well in an interview with Tucker Carlson.
I expect DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and perhaps Haley to see a bump in the polls in Iowa following the event.
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