Hi, it's Diane. On my mind, the first Republican debate.

Tonight, the race for the White House takes flight. Welcome to the first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign live advisor forum in Milwaukee.

On Wednesday night, eight candidates took the stage to make their appeal to GOP primary voters.

But as the moderators pointed out, the elephant not in the room was Donald Trump.

He opted for a one-on-one interview with Tucker Carlton.

The former president then traveled to Atlanta to be booked on criminal charges for the fourth time in recent months.

Susan Page is Washington Bureau Chief for USA Today. She joined me Thursday to talk about the debate and this very unprecedented primary.

Susan, what did we learn from last night's debate?

I think we learned that Donald Trump is a front runner, that he is not being effectively challenged by a credible rival.

And so if you're looking for Donald Trump to be denied the Republican nomination, that is going to come down to things that Donald Trump does, not things that these rivals do.

Are you saying that nobody on that stage was credible?

No, I think some could be credible. But at the moment, Donald Trump has the kind of consistent, enormous lead over his rivals, 40 percentage points in the national polls, that we've not seen in modern times.

We haven't seen a candidate denied the nomination when they have such a significant and continuing lead as Trump has had.

And what struck me most about the debate was that the candidates mostly gave Trump an easy ride.

You know, if you want to deny him the nomination, you need to bring him down.

And only three people tried to do that. Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, neither of whom are really credible nominees.

And interestingly, Nikki Haley, who of course was the UN ambassador in the Trump administration, she was surprisingly critical of the president.

If you ask me the biggest surprise of the night, that would be it.

She was very strong in talking about money, in talking about what the Trump administration had done and why we cannot allow him into the White House again.

You know, she made two arguments against Trump. One was she said, don't just blame the Democrats for the huge national debt.

It was Republicans in the Trump administration that added $8 trillion in national debt.

She volunteered that, that wasn't in response to her question. But later in the debate, she also said that Trump is the most disliked politician in America.

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