US presidential hopefuls locked horns Wednesday for the fourth debate in the 2024 Republican primary, with the race narrowing to a head-to-head battle to be the main alternative to runaway frontrunner Donald Trump.
The former president — who is running to retake the White House despite facing 91 felony charges — maintains a historically large lead and has seen his polling go from strength to strength with each new indictment.
But Trump has skipped the debates, seeing no advantage in sharing the stage with distant rivals, and rendering them a sideshow to the battle pitting his presidential ambitions against the might of the US justice system.
In Trump’s absence, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley was seeking to build on a surge in her polling numbers to supplant Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the most viable Trump understudy, six weeks ahead of the first nomination vote.
She hit out at DeSantis’s faltering polling numbers and Trump’s foreign policy record on Friday, telling Fox News she was proud of creating jobs and curbing crime as South Carolina governor in the 2010s.বিস্তারিত