people watching this show today, what we heard last night, but is it to the base, who the candidates are speaking to? no question, that s what the base wants to hear. you can almost think of this as two debates, two primaries. you have the maga primary which, clearly, vivek won, and then you had the, you know, donor/normy debate. i think that nikki haley really scored points there. i think she ll get another look at folks looking for an alternative. i have to say, that may have been chris christie s finest moment, standing next to mike pence and devoting his time to defending what the vice president did. it was very clear, in a very articulate way. mike pence not shying away from the decision he made on january 6th. but we should be under no illusions, that the people like vivek and ron desantis were appealing to the majority of
meanwhile, president biden is agreeing with something nikki haley said last night. he posted the following video with the caption, what she said. take a look. you have ron desantis. you ve got tim scott. you ve got mike pence. they all voted to raise the debt, and donald trump added $8 trillion to our debt. our kids are never going to forgive us for this. joining us in studio, the democratic governor of the great state of maryland, wes moore. he is a member of the biden/harris 2024 national advisory board. good to see you. good to see you, too. before we get to the debate and other stuff, when you were sworn into office in january, the orioles were coming off a fourth place, unremarkable season. since you took office, they have the best record in the american league. is there a connection, sir? i think so. they re going to be a juggernaut for years to come. this is maryland s decade. that includes we re going to get world series rings in the ballpark.
pence did the right thing, senator scott? do you believe he did the right thing? absolutely, he did the right thing. number one. number two, we should be asking ourselves a bigger question about the weaponization of the department of justice. when i m president, the first thing i ll do is fire merrick garland. second thing i ll do, fire christopher wray. mike pence stood for the constitution, and he deserves not grudging credit, he deserves our thanks as americans for putting his oath of office and the constitution of the united states before personal, political and unfair pressure. i do think that vice president pence did the right thing, and i do think we need to give him credit for that. i ve answered this before. so yes? mike did his duty. i got no beef with him. but here s the thing, is this
number one, i don t think, by the way, that this was the debate that ron desantis wanted or that he needed. he felt like he was an afterthought by the end of the debate. yes, vivek came in very, very strong, but you saw his weaknesses later on when nikki haley took him down. i thought nikki haley overperformed. i mean, she was impressive. she was the adult in the room. she was the adult in the room on spending, on abortion, on ukraine. mike pence overperformed. but let s be honest, they were not appealing to the viewers of the bulwark or morning joe. it was vivek who knew the maga world war, and he was playing to that. he was playing to the
down. when they asked him, did mike pence do the right thing? what a hard question, ron. yeah, i like the constitution. jonathan martin, your take on last night? i thought, joe, you touched on a really key point. ron desantis on that answer, but also really more broadly, his entire candidacy, he wants to avoid making a choice. he wants to be the candidate who doesn t make the choice. you saw what the choices were last night very starkly. choice one, pre-trump party, mike pence, nikki haley, who want to make a choice and say, we are pre-trump republicans. then there is the post-trump party, which is vivek being a trump apologist at every turn and effectively running for, you know, the trump second term. i think, joe, it s really