BREAKING: RNC Announces Candidates Who Qualified for the First Presidential Primary Debate

Two days before the first GOP presidential primary debate of the 2024 election cycle, the Republican National Committee formally announced which candidates have met the qualifications to appear on the debate stage in Milwaukee.

The press release lists the candidates in alphabetical order:

Governor Doug Burgum
Governor Chris Christie
Governor Ron DeSantis
Ambassador Nikki Haley
Governor Asa Hutchinson
Vice President Mike Pence
Vivek Ramaswamy
Senator Tim Scott

Missing from that list are Donald Trump (who undoubtedly qualified, but announced he would not be attending), Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Larry Elder, Will Hurd, Perry Johnson, and more whose name nobody really knows. Both Johnson and Suarez announced Friday that they'd qualified, so there's likely to be some challenges to the RNC's determination coming from their campaigns.

Candidates had until 48 hours before the debate to meet the criteria and had to present the documentation to the RNC by the same deadline. The qualifications are as follows:

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said:

The RNC is excited to showcase our diverse candidate field and the conservative vision to beat Joe Biden on the debate stage Wednesday night. I’d like to thank the RNC’s debate committee Chairman Dave Bossie and Co-Chair Anne Hathaway and our debate partners, Fox News, Young America’s Foundation, and Rumble for their work to kick off the primary process that will put our Party and eventual nominee in the best position to take back the White House next fall.

There's already been some controversy about who's attending the debate; as Joe Cunningham reported earlier, while some Trump surrogates have publicly stated that they will be at the debate to defend the former President, Fox News, the network running that debate, reportedly "informed the Trump campaign [Monday] they will no longer allow surrogates for the former president to attend the debate in Milwaukee given Trump is not planning on participating." Trump will be participating in an interview with Tucker Carlson, who was fired by Fox in April, during the time the debate airs.