Het publiek de onbetwiste winnaar

Meatball Ron's doodskus door POLITICO: "Ron DeSantis expected to take the brunt of his opponents’ fire. Instead, he faded into the crowd." Ron is klaar, en de avond werd naar verwachting gewonnen door Vivek Ramaswamy (spreek je dus uit als Viveek, "Like Cake.")

Hetzelfde POLITICO over Vivek: "Vivek Ramaswamy got all he could have wanted out of tonight: attention and the opportunity to reinforce the idea the party’s establishment is out to get him. If you were a Republican who still hadn’t seen a clip of Ramaswamy on social media or TV, you learned who he was tonight. And the fact all knives were out for him shows that the other candidates see him not just as an annoyance, but as a threat right now as they’re trying to break through themselves."

De Washington Post: "(...) But Ramaswamy was unfazed through just about all of it. And over and over again, he benefited from being pitted against the two most unpopular candidates in the field. (...) Ramaswamy also frequently cut in, gaming relatively lax enforcement of the debate rules to make himself the center of attention." 

De New York Times: "Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur with no government experience, was the center of a number of contentious debate exchanges, seeming to enjoy being attacked as much as he appeared to relish going after experienced candidates over their records."

Ook het CNN-publiekspanel vond Vivek de winnaar. In het totale gemiddelde van alle peilingen staat Trump nu op 52,1%, DeSantis op 15,2% en Vivek op 9,7%. De beste beelden uit het GOP-debat en het Trump-interview allemaal na de breek.