Here's what to know about the evening.

Until next time, so long.

All but two of the Republicans on stage said they wanted to see continued aid to Ukraine, describing American support as both a strategic and moral imperative.

DeSantis and Ramaswamy said they wanted the aid to end. DeSantis said he wanted to condition any further support on countries in Europe doing more to support the nation, while Ramaswamy said he feared the war was creating a strong Russia-China military alliance.

Haley, disparaging any appeasement of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said, “This guy is a murderer, and you are choosing a murderer,” turning to Ramaswamy, who was at the lectern next to hers.

Read morehere:

Of course, the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection came up at the debate. Moderator Martha MacCallum asked the candidates whether they believed that then-Vice President Mike Pence, who had presided over the joint session of Congress that day, had done the right thing in refusing to go along with then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to upend the certification of the 2020 election.

Their consensus? Yes.

Ramaswamy may have been relatively unknown in the GOP race, but he caught a lot of attention at the first Republican debate of the election cycle.

Read HuffPost’s Igor Bobic on how the tech entrepreneur outshined Republicans who are leading the race in this debate.

Fake news on abortion and women’s rights flowed freely during the debate, and HuffPost’s Alanna Vagianos tackled each lie with the facts.

Read her fact-checking report here:

Vice President Kamala Harris roasted the candidates on tonight’s debate stage, saying the American people had “heard how much they stand to lose from an extremist agenda.”

“One by one, each extremist Republican candidate laid out a vision for an America that is less fair, less free and less safe,” she said. “These extremists focus on unnecessary debates meant to divide our nation in hopes that the American public will not notice they have no affirmative agenda.”

Uncharacteristically, the right-wing news outlet asked candidates about recent deadly natural disasters and, with a show of hands, whether they believed these events were connected to climate change.

The conversation, however, was quickly derailed when DeSantis mocked the moderators for asking.

HuffPost’s Alexander Kaufman dove into the chaos of the candidates’ wide-ranging climate change views — and how Fox News failed to gain back control over the conversation and get the candidates to definitively show their hands:

Trump has started blasting some of his opponents on his Truth Social platform after tonight’s debate. He called Christie “horrible,” saying the former governor was “booed at a level never seen before" at such an event.

The former president went on to reject claims that he asked Pence, his former vice president, to step in to help him remain in power after he lost the 2020 election.

“I never asked Mike Pence to put me above the Constitution,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Who would say such a thing? A FAKE STORY!”

Out of the eight candidates on stage, six Republicans said they would still back Trump as a presidential nominee — even if he becomes a convicted felon.

Christie and Hutchinson were the only two who distanced themselves from Trump.

HuffPost’s S.V. Date breaks down the other candidates’ unwavering support for a former president who attempted to orchestrate a coup.

Read more below:

Did Ramaswamy sound familiar?

Christie was quick to call out Ramaswamy, after the biotech entrepreneur apparently swiped a line Barack Obama used during his first presidential campaign.

HuffPost’s Ed Mazza highlights the similarities here:

Burgum painted himself as a working-class man at heart who will “get this economy sprinting.”

Hutchinson said “the solution is not four more years of Donald Trump” but rather a leader who “brings out the best” in Americans, like former President Ronald Reagan did.

Scott said he is proof the American dream is alive. He finished by slipping in a dig on transgender people: “If God made you a man, you play sports — against men.”

Christie said he is the only one on stage to beat a Democratic incumbent in a reelection bid, stating, “I’m the one who can win this race if given a chance.”

Haley recalled what it was like seeing a loved one deployed before vowing to bring down inflation and better support law enforcement.

Pence said Biden has “weakened America at home and abroad,” bringing up the Afghanistan withdrawal. He added: “But different times call for different leadership, and the Republican Party owes the people a choice.”

Ramaswamy said Americans have forgotten how they are alike, “bound by a common set of ideals.” Those apparently include: “God is real,” “there are two genders,” “fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity” and “reverse racism is racism.”

DeSantis said he is “a blue-collar kid” who understands “the importance of the American dream” and the military, where he served as a lawyer. “2024 is make or break. We’re not getting a mulligan — not excuses.”

After one hour and 41 minutes, Haley broke a shocking drought at the first Republican presidential debate when she dropped the first use of the word “woke.”

“There’s a lot of crazy woke things happening in schools,” Haley said.

DeSantis, who declared a “war on woke” and managed touse the word seven times in 26 seconds in one speech, did not use the word "woke" at all.

The near-total absence of a word that has been a mainstay on the campaign trail for many of the candidates comes asRepublican voters become less interested in the anti-woke message.

A question about whether presidents have to pass a mental and physical test to run for the Oval Office quickly went off the rails.

Both Pence and Ramaswamy said they opposed such a test. Pence answered first with a joke, saying that “everybody in D.C. should” have to pass such a test before clarifying his position. He then appeared to take a swipe at Ramaswamy as too young and inexperienced.

DeSantis started off the education portion of the debate, touting his record in Florida to limit discussion of race and gender identity in classrooms. His aggressive effort to limit the rights of LGBTQ+ people in the state has been lambasted by civil rights groups,as well as other Republicans.

“We have to make sure that what our schools are doing is focusing on solid academics,” Christie said. “We cannot be graduating students who have no foundation in what it means to be an American.”

On immigration law, Christie put forward a position as far right as anything Trump pursued as president: deporting all unauthorized immigrants in the country.

Making no distinction between the millions of unauthorized migrants living in the country, Christie said, “We have to have them detained, we have to make sure they are not rewarded for breaking the law.” (Many migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization are pursuing their legal right to apply for asylum.)

After a tangent about China, McCallum pressed for clarity: “Would you send those people back?”

“Of course, you’d have to,” Christie responded.

Several of the candidates said they support lethal force on migrants crossing the southern border and blamed them for the country’s opioid crisis. DeSantis went as far as to say that as president, he’d send troops across the border on “day one” to target fentanyl labs.

“We have to reestablish the rule of law, and we have to defend our people,” he said.

In reality,recent data shows that nearly 90% of convicted fentanyl traffickers were U.S. citizens, and just 0.02% of migrants arrested for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border had any fentanyl on them.

Ramaswamy jumped in earlier in the debate to note he’s the only candidate on the stage who’s vowed to pardon Donald Trump on the first day of his presidency.

That would help the former president in his federal cases, but state investigations — notably the latest indictment in Georgia — are much different. Read morehere.

Donald Trump's much-hyped interview with ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which was posted online just as the 2024 GOP presidential debate was set to begin in Milwaukee, offered little in the way of actual news.

The 45-minute sit-down was supposed to draw attention away from Trump's rivals even though he wouldn't be joining them onstage on Wednesday night. But really it was more of the same from Trump. It also didn't air on television, but rather Carlson's account on X, the social media website formerly known as Twitter.

Trump attacked President Joe Biden, including at one point saying Biden "looks like he's walking on toothpicks." He also called his four indictments "bullshit" and criticized the rivals who are his biggest critics, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

"He's weak and pathetic...He's nasty, always has been," Trump said of Hutchinson.

Christie, Trump added, is a "savage maniac" and a "lunatic."

Ramaswamy voiced strong opposition to the U.S. continuing to send funding and military assets to help Ukraine fight off Russia, going so far as to say such assets should be turned on the southern U.S. border to prevent migrants from entering the country.

Pence retorted that “giving away” Ukraine to Russian President Vladimir Putin meant “it’s not going to be too long before he rolls across a NATO border.”

“He is a dictator and a murderer,” Pence said.

Ramaswamy replied that "the real threat we face today is communist China."

Christie spoke out in support of Pence for his refusal to stand with Trump on his election fraud claims.

“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,” Christie said.

“We have to dispense with the person who said that we need to suspend the Constitution to put forward his political career,” he continued. “Mike Pence said no, and he deserves credit for it."

Ramaswamy declared his unwavering support for the former president, saying, “President Trump was the best president of the 20th century.” He then turned to Christie to say the former New Jersey governor's campaign is just about trashing Trump, sparking cheers from the crowd.

“You’ve never done anything to advance the interests of the United States government except to advance yourself as a candidate here tonight,” Christie responded.

He added: “I will not support a president who disrespects the Constitution.” The crowd booed.

We’ve entered a much-anticipated portion of the debate: Asking the candidates about Trump and his many indictments.

Trump hasn't really been mentioned much so far at all, but there are already sparks flying between the candidates over how much to disavow him.