Second GOP debate ratings: Viewership drops by more than 25 percent

Ratings for the second Republican presidential debate Wednesday are in — and the 26 percent decline is not a good sign for candidates not named Donald Trump.

Around 9.5 million people tuned into the debate, which was broadcast on Fox Business Network and simultaneously played on Fox News, where most people tuned in, and Univision, the network said Thursday. In comparison, almost 13 million people watched the first debate, which Fox hosted at the end of August.

The falling viewership comes alongside seemingly tepid appetites from Republican primary voters to choose anyone other than Trump, who despite facing dozens of criminal charges has stood head and shoulders above the rest of the field in polling. The former president has refused to show up for the debates and has run counterprogramming for both of the events so far — he first chatted with Tucker Carlson on X, and then he visited automobile workers in Michigan this week.

His campaign has already said he would not attend the next scheduled debate, which is slated for Miami at the beginning of November. Running his race like an incumbent, Trump has already set his eyes toward tackling President Joe Biden over the other candidates in the field, issuing a message on abortion that has drawn some ire from the most conservative parts of his party.

Trump has held a monumental lead in the polls throughout much of the race — leading his second-placing candidate, almost always Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by 30 or more points in most surveys — and the first debate did little to change the dynamic.

Back in 2015, when Trump was a fresh novelty in the Republican Party and the race was perceived as much more competitive, primary debates set viewership records left and right. The first primary debate of the 2016 cycle drew 24 million watchers, and the second had slightly lower viewership at 23 million. In fact, all 12 debates of that primary cycle, from August 2015 to March 2016, had more than 11 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Before the second debate even ended Wednesday night, Trump’s campaign put out a statement pushing for the end of the events, calling them a waste of time that would not change the race's trajectory.

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The case for panicking over Biden’s reelection campaign

Should Democrats be wetting the bed over President Joe Biden's chances of winning reelection?

Depends on who you ask. Some in the party are truly panicked. Others are begging their compatriots to take a deep breath.

To find out who has the more compelling case, West Wing Playbook asked one person on each side of the debate to make it. Today we present to you the side of panic through an interview with Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who has encouraged other Democrats to challenge Biden in a primary and has thought about getting in the race himself.

On Friday, we will have a Q&A with a Democrat making the case for calm. So don’t @ us just yet.

Yes or no: do you think Biden can win the 2024 race?

Yes, he could win. But the question is, are there others who might be better positioned to win assuming that the eventual GOP nominee is going to be Donald Trump? We should not be sugarcoating or diverting attention from the polling data — we should be digesting it while there’s still time to course correct.

OK, you think he can win. But you also think he could lose?

Yes, I’m one of tens of millions of Americans who have that very legitimate concern.

Do you view the recent Washington Post-ABC poll as an outlier? Or a major warning sign?

If that’s not a warning sign, and a wake up call, and a red alert, I don’t know what would be.

While there’s still time, we should let Americans decide who is best positioned to beat Donald Trump because clearly the data is saying a majority of Americans do not believe, unfortunately, that it is President Biden.

Do you think this is mostly an age issue for him?

I’m trying to focus just on what the numbers are saying. The numbers are saying that despite successful policy implementation, despite navigating through some difficult years, that people are not pleased.

Why is that? If the policies are all there, what more can he do? 

It’s not a failure of policy. We’ve outperformed, I think, every OECD country in the world. But what we have to do better is to express empathy and understanding that people are not feeling that.

Democrats are always worried about elections. Why is this time any different? 

We’re somewhat sleepwalking into a repeat of 2016. That was a time when we thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. It was close, but she was always ahead. And now, no matter what one thinks of polling and surveys at this stage of a race, what is fundamentally different is that the president — at best — is tied, and more likely is slightly behind. 

Some Democrats think the party needs to chill out and stop panicking. Are they off the mark?

In my professional life, both in the public sector and private sector, chilling out has never been a recipe for success in addressing any problem. Thoughts and prayers don’t solve gun violence, they don’t give people homes or food — and chilling out does not make for electoral success.

It was hard to get someone to do this Q&A. People didn’t want to be on the record ringing the alarm bell. Why do you think that is?

Sadly, too many are focused on their own professional futures and not focused enough on our country’s future at a time when we really, really need that. 

Has all of this just been about raising your own profile?

I don’t think many would recommend this course of action to simply raise one’s profile in a system that rewards people who stay quiet and stay in line and sit down and shush up. 

So you’re running? 

I’ve still continued to encourage those who are more proximate and prepared to run a compelling campaign to jump in because we need you now — not in 2028. But if no one is willing to do so, I might.

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What does Matt Gaetz really want?

What is Matt Gaetz's endgame: spending cuts, a political boost, or revenge?

It’s the question reverberating on Capitol Hill after the simmering feud between the Florida conservative and Speaker Kevin McCarthy flared up again Thursday morning in a closed-door meeting, with one lawmaker telling Gaetz to “fuck off” for leveling unproven accusations against the speaker. Gaetz has threatened to force a vote on booting McCarthy for weeks, publicly called him “pathetic” and accused him of lying multiple times.

Hill Republicans, when granted anonymity to speak candidly, say they don't believe Gaetz when he insists it "isn't personal” (though rank-and-file GOP lawmakers are quick to add they don’t know what has set off the Florida Republican).

Some in the GOP chalk it up to Gaetz seeking a future foothold as a conservative TV pundit, others to a desire for name recognition ahead of his widely expected gubernatorial bid in 2026. Still others say he’s sincere in his demands for more spending cuts before voting to fund the government.

The speaker hasn't publicly weighed in. But in private, McCarthy has questioned what he could have done to trigger this level of hostility from Gaetz, according to a longtime ally of the speaker. Other McCarthy allies have theorized that Gaetz's fury dates back to a now-closed Justice Department inquiry into sex trafficking allegations, when some in the House GOP came just short of openly celebrating his potential political demise.

Gaetz denied that he faults McCarthy for anything related to that probe: “No, I think that was all handled fine,” he told POLITICO in a brief interview.

Still, calling Gaetz a thorn in McCarthy’s side would be an understatement. The Floridian has repeatedly threatened to call for a vote to strip the speaker's gavel if he works with Democrats to avert a government shutdown. He’s the most vocal among the conservatives who have sworn to oppose any stopgap plan to keep the government's lights on, and while he's not in the House Freedom Caucus, he counts many of its most obstreperous members as frequent allies.

McCarthy knows a long shutdown imperils his hold on his thin majority come 2025 — and the threat of a challenge to his speakership before the crisis is over looms large. Which Gaetz is openly, repeatedly, pushing for.

The Californian pointedly declined to criticize Gaetz during the federal sex trafficking probe that ensnared him. But in recent weeks, as their relationship curdled, McCarthy has occasionally hurled his own accusations back at Gaetz — while shrugging off the threats with “Matt is Matt.”

The speaker alleged to reporters earlier this month that the conservative was working against him alongside Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), referring to frustration over an unspecified ethics complaint.

Their tense relationship began affecting the entire House GOP more than a year ago, when the Floridian vowed to nominate former President Donald Trump for speaker. That clear message of no confidence in McCarthy shortly thereafter translated into open resistance on the floor throughout January’s speakership election.

Gaetz never cast a ballot for McCarthy, remaining one of six conservatives who — only after 14 failed rounds — agreed to vote “present” in order to let the Californian claim the top gavel. Now, he insists that his repeated antagonizing of the speaker has everything to do with holding McCarthy to the promises he made during that standoff, including bringing all 12 individual spending bills to the House floor.

“It’s based on the terms of the January agreement. If Kevin comes into compliance with the January agreement, he doesn’t have any problems. If he continues to be out of compliance with the January agreement, he’s got problems,” Gaetz said, though he's publicly acknowledged that some of the priorities he's demanded from McCarthy would likely fail in floor votes.

Immediately after the tense Thursday meeting, Gaetz brushed off reporters' questions on whether he was ready to force a vote to boot McCarthy from the speakership. He maintained that his “principal goal” is passing the individual spending bills the House GOP has struggled to clear this week.

Some members believe there’s more on Gaetz’s mind, however. The Florida conservative has already built significant name recognition as McCarthy’s foil, and Republicans see Gaetz as someone who likes to punch up for political gain — he's rumored to be eyeing Florida's governorship in 2026, when Gov. Ron DeSantis is termed out.

That means allying himself with other gadflies, more so than just a partnership with hardliners in the Freedom Caucus. Some Republicans noted Gaetz’s defense of former Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), both progressives who have clashed with their own leadership, as a further sign he aligns himself with self-styled outsiders.

“I just really think that one person wants a lot of attention. It may not be all that personal. It is maybe made-up to be personal,” GOP Rep. Carlos Giménez said of his fellow Floridian, later clarifying that the attention-seeker he referenced was not McCarthy.

“I think [Gaetz] is just using that as a vehicle to run for governor, and he thinks that the one way to go lift his profile is becoming this rebel,” Giménez added, describing his motivations as “despicable” either way.

Gaetz, or “Baby Gaetz” as he is known back in Florida, jumped from the state legislature to D.C. in 2017, where he’d quickly trade in a bipartisan record for a reputation as a populist Donald Trump defender. It was a reinvention he almost openly boasted about in a 2019 interview with the New York Times — saying that in the current political landscape “you’ve got to have the ability to reinvent yourself in this game many times.”

It's a strategy that’s worked well so far. In addition to the media attention he gets for his spat with McCarthy, Gaetz also earns positive feedback about it from his anti-establishment conservative base in Florida — a key demographic if he wants to take the governorship in a few years.

Asked about the Gaetz-McCarthy fight, Don Gaetz, the Florida congressman's father and a former state senator with considerable influence, said "there is no personal animus between him and Speaker McCarthy. What you see from Matt is what you are getting."

Gary Fineout contributed to this report.

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Adams: NYC policy to shelter the homeless shouldn't cover migrant influx

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams suggested Thursday he wants to exempt the influx of migrants from the city's decades-old right-to-shelter mandate as his administration tightens the length on shelter stays and explicitly discourages new arrivals.

“I don't believe the right to shelter applies to a migrant crisis,” Adams said during an appearance on WABC’s "Sid & Friends in the Morning," referring to a mandate dating back to 1981 that the city provide shelter beds to anyone in need.

He was responding to a decision from a Staten Island judge earlier this week that referred to the shelter guarantee as “an anachronistic relic from the past” that was “intended to address a problem as different from today's dilemma as night and day."

The mayor appeared to agree with that sentiment, even as his administration plans to appeal the larger order from Judge Wayne Ozzi, which blocked a migrant shelter in Staten Island.

“Our team is looking at exactly what we're going to do with the ruling,” the mayor said. “There are parts of the ruling we may — and that's may — agree with. We're going to examine that."

Adams’ comments come as the city moves to seek relief from the right-to-shelter mandate in court and further restricts how long migrants can stay in shelters.

The administration is now limiting shelter stays for new arrivals to 30 days, down from a 60-day limit the city began imposing in July. Migrants can still return to the arrival center for a new time-restricted placement if they have nowhere to go at the end of that period.

The moving target has sowed confusion among asylum-seekers, advocates and elected officials said, as the city looks to limit the surge of more than 110,000 migrants who have come to the city since 2022.

“We saw that people were confused by the messages that they got about what was supposed to happen when they got to the end of whatever time limit they had,” said Joshua Goldfein, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society, which serves in a watchdog role over the right-to-shelter mandate.

“It doesn’t make sense to put an arbitrary time limit on when somebody is getting services.”

Others say the migrant-specific restrictions are a slippery slope toward weakening hard-fought shelter requirements that keep homeless New Yorkers off the streets.

“The intent here is to illegally get as many of them out as possible by utilizing loopholes that allow them to do that,” Council Member Diana Ayala, chair of the committee overseeing the shelter system, said in an interview.

“My concern is that we’re going to start with eliminating out-of-towners and people from out of the state, and then what? Then we move to New Yorkers?” Ayala said. Speaking of shelter conditions, she added, “They’re just trying to make it as uncomfortable as possible so folks not only don’t come here, but exit on their own.”

Discouraging new arrivals has become an increasingly explicit goal of migrant policies enacted by the Adams administration.

Officials released new fliers Wednesday that they plan to hand out at the border, which note that asylum-seekers in New York City “are now getting letters to move out of the shelter” and warn newcomers that they will not be placed in a hotel. It also notes that the city “cannot help you obtain a work permit,” and that migrants “will not be able to easily find work.”

“NYC is one of the most expensive cities in the world; you are better off going to a more affordable city,” the flier reads.

“We definitely do want to discourage people from coming here so that we can pretty much deal with the 113,000 people that are in our system right now,” Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said at a briefing on the issue Wednesday. “We want to be responsible and tell people the truth about what they're walking into.”

There are upward of 61,000 asylum-seekers currently in the city’s care, and more than 3,000 entered the city’s care just last week, officials said.

Several hundred migrants have hit the 60-day limits since last week, when the policy went into effect, according to Ted Long, senior vice president at New York City Health + Hospitals, which is running some of the migrant facilities.

From last Friday to early this week, “less than half of those still under our care on day 61 needed to come back to the arrival center for another placement,” Long told reporters Wednesday. City Hall did not respond to a request for more specific figures.

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Attorneys fret shutdown will derail long-awaited Trump deposition

The impending government shutdown might inadvertently derail a deposition of Donald Trump that has been years in the making, attorneys in a long-running civil lawsuit warned Thursday.

Lawyers for former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — who are suing the Justice Department claiming their departures from the bureau were improperly influenced by Trump — say they’ve scheduled a two-hour Oct. 17 session with the former president.

However, they noted that the Justice Department typically seeks to delay all civil matters during government shutdowns and might seek to do so in the Strzok-Page case as well.

“Considering the lengthy effort that scheduling Mr. Trump’s deposition required and that a stay might result in substantial delay of the conclusion of this action, Plaintiffs will oppose any stay and expect to promptly request relief from any default stay that is imposed,” Strzok and Page’s attorneys wrote.

The two former FBI employees were involved in Trump-related investigations in 2016 and 2017 before the public release of their private text messages by Justice Department officials revealed hostility and disgust with Trump. They’ve sued over the handling of those messages and claimed that Trump’s public attacks on them contributed to the FBI’s decision to fire Strzok and Page’s resignation.

Deposing Trump is the last step in the process of evidence gathering connected to the lawsuit, which has also resulted in depositions of FBI Director Christopher Wray and other senior FBI and DOJ officials.

The effort to depose Trump has been laborious. An earlier scheduled deposition in the spring was postponed after the Justice Department sought to block it altogether, claiming that Strzok and Page had failed to present evidence that Trump’s conduct had any bearing on their departures from the bureau. But Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered a narrow and limited deposition of Trump despite DOJ’s efforts.

The Justice Department sought intervention from an appellate court to block Trump’s deposition, but an appeals court panel rejected the effort over the summer, putting Trump’s deposition back on track.

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DeSantis slams Trump and Biden after Republican debate

Fresh off the second Republican presidential debate, Ron DeSantis is going into attack mode.

The morning after the debate, the Florida governor took issue with President Joe Biden's new campaign ad that spliced together snippets of DeSantis' debate performance in which he called out former President Donald Trump for his absence on the debate stages. It ends with Biden saying he approves this message.

DeSantis clapped back on X, formerly known as Twitter: “When I'm the nominee, I'll make you climb out of your basement, accept responsibility, and defend your failed record, @JoeBiden.”

DeSantis also had his sights on Trump, digging even further into Trump’s absence on the debate stage by saying in a Fox News interview that Trump should “defend why is he running on the same program in 2016 that he did not actually implement.”

“He has had a lot to say about me on social media since 2022 — right before the midterm election, he started attacking me when we were supposed to be united to a red wave,” DeSantis said. “[It's] one thing to do it behind the keyboard. Do it to my face. I'm ready for it. You used to say I'm a great governor. Now you say the opposite. Let's have the discussion. We can do it one-on-one.”

The digs come after DeSantis failed to create a viral, memorable moment at Wednesday night’s debate — or even one at the August debate. Instead, DeSantis appeared only to be going off rehearsed riffs.

DeSantis was seen as Trump’s top potential Republican challenger when he first announced his presidential run in May, but his poll numbers have only fallen since then — both nationally and in early-voting states. DeSantis ranked fifth place in a CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released this month. A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed Trump’s lead over DeSantis has nearly doubled since April.

“Polls don’t elect presidents, voters elect presidents,” DeSantis said Wednesday night.

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GOP senators rough up Pentagon nominee over Afghanistan evacuation

Republican senators on Thursday tore into President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the Pentagon’s policy chief over the role he played in the Afghanistan evacuation when he was a State Department official.

During Derek Chollet’s confirmation hearing to be the undersecretary of Defense for policy before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) called out what he characterized as the State Department’s failure to evacuate American citizens during and after the withdrawal.

He accused the administration of hindering his efforts to evacuate a group of Americans, including a 3-year-old girl with a leg infection, a mother and her three children, to the Kabul airport. At the time, Chollet was serving as counselor of the State Department, a role he still fills.

“All night of the 29th, you guys are taking me from gate, to gate, to gate, to gate, to gate, to gate, to gate trying to get these individuals in HKIA,” Mullin said, referring to the Hamid Karzai International Airport. “The State Department was stopping us every step of the way.”

After driving the three-year-old girl across the border to Tajikistan, the U.S. ambassador there told Mullin “I was told by Washington, D.C., not to assist you in any way,” the senator said during the hearing. The girl ultimately died, Mullin said, noting that he sent State Department officials pictures of her from his phone.

“For you to sit there and say that every American who wanted to get out got out, you're absolutely lying. And you know that to be factual and you say it with a straight face,” he said.

Chollet has been nominated to replace Colin Kahl as the top official advising the Pentagon chief on all matters related to policymaking. Kahl was one of Biden’s most controversial nominees, and only barely scraped through confirmation after facing sharp questions over his harsh criticism of Republicans on social media and support for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Republicans have said they want to reset relations with the policy chief after having a rocky relationship with Kahl, and Chollet is considered likely to be approved by the committee. But that didn’t stop some of them from asking tough questions about the Afghanistan withdrawal and other Biden-era decisions.

During Thursday’s hearing, Mullin hounded Chollet for an answer on whether anyone in the Biden administration has been held accountable for the “disastrous withdrawal.”

“Has anybody been held accountable?” said Mullin, who made repeated requests of the U.S. government to travel to Kabul during the evacuation to rescue American citizens. He’s since become an outspoken critic of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

“Senator, accountability is critically important–”

“No, I’m saying has anybody been held accountable?” Mullin interrupted. “That's a simple one. It's a yes or no.”

Other Republicans also went after Chollet for the Afghanistan evacuation. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the committee’s ranking member, said Chollet’s comments suggesting the decision to leave Afghanistan was “strategically sound” caused him concern.

During his questioning, Wicker referenced Biden’s interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos pledging to get all Americans out of the country.

“When did you realize that the president was not going to do this?” Wicker asked.

Chollet acknowledged his role in the withdrawal and touted the administration's evacuation of 120,000 people in August 2021, and 15,000 since then.

Chollet also took heat from Republicans for his defense of former President Barack Obama’s time in office, his comments to The Associated Press in 2018 that the notion of a security threat at the southern border was “preposterous,” and remarks to The New York Times in 2020 that “The Army in particular is a pretty bubba-oriented system.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) asked Chollet repeatedly what was more important to the Navy: warfighting and shipbuilding, or climate change. After Chollet refused to bite, Sullivan said the nominee’s answer was “extremely disappointing.”

“The biggest concern so many of us have is the civilians at the Pentagon are shoving down a system of values that don't relate to warfighting, don't work relate to lethality,” Sullivan said.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Chollet to say what he thought of the Biden administration’s timeframe for sending military equipment to Ukraine.

“In retrospect, do you agree there's any weapon system that the Biden administration should have sent earlier than it finally ended up sending them, or do you think it's pitched a perfect game on every decision?” Cotton asked.

Chollet acknowledged that the administration’s approach to Ukraine has not been “perfect,” but said he’s “satisfied” with the amount of assistance the U.S. has given to Kyiv.

"I don't think anyone presumes there's been a perfect game pitch, for sure,” Chollet said.

If the committee decides to approve Chollet's nomination, full Senate confirmation is still unlikely due to Sen. Tommy Tuberville's (R-Ala.) hold on all Pentagon nominees in protest of the agency's abortion travel policy.

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