Donald Trump stages another hate-filled rally in Florida while five wannabe heirs to the Republican nomination trade jabs nearby

When I was in col­lege, sev­er­al of us gath­ered one night around a rec room table to play a war game on the theme of the World War II D‑Day land­ing in France.

It was a beery occa­sion in which one play­er cheat­ed and moved the pow­er­ful Panz­er Lehr chip clos­er to the Allied beaches.

He was caught. The oppos­ing play­er became gen­uine­ly, momen­tar­i­ly angry, until a bystander joked that it was a game and the Allies had bro­ken through Ger­man lines to the point where the Fuhrer was con­tem­plat­ing suicide.

The dor­mi­to­ry scene was reen­act­ed on stage tonight as five Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates met on stage in Mia­mi for a mean­ing­less clash.

All the debaters trail far behind fron­trun­ner Don­ald Trump, who skipped the event and held a ral­ly not far away.

The con­test became fierce, how­ev­er, because the stakes were so low.

The top­ic was Tik­Tok and whether the Chi­nese-owned social media net­work is being used to spread ene­my pro­pa­gan­da and cap­ture America’s youth.

Yep, Repub­li­cans do debate this top­ic, with no more vig­or­ous Tik­Toc crit­ic than ex-South Car­oli­na Gov­er­nor Nik­ki Haley.

Rival Vivek Ramaswamy said he’s used Tik­Tok to con­vey his cam­paign and made a sneer­ing ref­er­ence to Haley: “She made fun of me for actu­al­ly join­ing Tik­Tok while her own daugh­ter was actu­al­ly using the app for a long time.”

“Leave my daugh­ter out of your voice,” Haley snapped in a moth­er griz­zly response, then mut­tered, “You’re just scum.”

Haley avoid­ed him on stage after the debate. She’s been climb­ing in the polls and has caught Flori­da Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis is a cou­ple of ear­ly states. But each is about forty points behind the fre­quent­ly-indict­ed fron­trun­ner Trump.

The also-rans have been left to strug­gle for talk­ing points and com­pete for atten­tion. They faced off under dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances tonight, in that Democ­rats had just used the cause of repro­duc­tive rights to sweep the board in a local elec­tion year. The Repub­li­cans’ evan­gel­i­cal base is fierce­ly anti-abor­tion, while sev­en states – includ­ing red states Ohio, Ken­tucky and Kansas – have vot­ed to pro­tect access to abor­tion care since the Dobbs deci­sion was hand­ed down.

Haley showed signs of rec­og­niz­ing Repub­li­cans’ unpop­u­lar posi­tion, and alien­ation of sub­ur­ban women. “I don’t judge any­one for being pro-choice and I don’t want them judg­ing me for being pro-life,” she said. “Stop the judg­ment. We don’t need to divide Amer­i­cans over this issue anymore.”

Sen­a­tor Tim Scott (R‑South Car­oli­na) and ex-Gov­er­nor Chris Christie (for­mer­ly R‑New Jer­sey) clashed on the issue. Scott was adamant that there should be a nation­al ban on abor­tion after fif­teen weeks of pregnancy.

Christie remind­ed him that lawyers seek­ing to over­turn Roe v. Wade had argued that the legal­i­ty of access to abor­tion should be left up to the states.

Haley added that no nation­al abor­tion ban could ever pass the U.S. Sen­ate. Ramaswamy ram­bled on about “the sex­u­al respon­si­bil­i­ty of men” and forc­ing guys to assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for preg­nan­cies as an alter­na­tive to termination.

Abor­tion wasn’t the only unpop­u­lar Repub­li­can posi­tion debat­ed on stage.

Chris Christie made the case for rais­ing the retire­ment age under Social Secu­ri­ty. He didn’t say by how much, but cit­ed his thir­ty-year-old son as one who should bear the bur­den: “If he can’t adjust to a few year increase in Social Secu­ri­ty retire­ment age over the next forty years, I’ve got big­ger prob­lems with him than his Social Secu­ri­ty payments.”

Haley, as well, was look­ing at her off­spring work­ing longer in the future.

“Those who have been promised should keep it (Social Secu­ri­ty),” she said, “but for like my kids in their twen­ties, you go and you say, ‘We’re going to change the rules.’ You change the retire­ment age for them.”

DeSan­tis is gov­er­nor of a state with huge num­bers of retired cit­i­zens (and vot­ers). “As gov­er­nor of Flori­da I know a few peo­ple on Social Secu­ri­ty,” he said – as close as DeSan­tis will ever come to mirth.

“It’s one thing to just pay it on life expectan­cy but we have had a sig­nif­i­cant decline in life expectan­cy in this century.”

In oth­er words, he wouldn’t raise the age of eligibility.

Sup­port for Israel in its war with Hamas has become a holy grail with Repub­li­cans, along with a tool to bash “The Squad” – young pro­gres­sive women of col­or in Con­gress – and demo­nize the nation’s lead­ing col­leges and their stu­dents. They’ve been open­ing up on cease-fire protests.

So it was tonight. DeSan­tis has played boss to Florida’s State Uni­ver­si­ty Sys­tem and boast­ed of telling col­lege admin­is­tra­tors to ban the group Stu­dents for Jus­tice in Pales­tine. “We’re not going to use state dol­lars to finance jihad,” he declared.

Col­lege admin­is­tra­tors are, charged Haley, more tol­er­ant of anti­semitism than racism. “If the Ku Klux Klan were doing this, every col­lege pres­i­dent would be up in arms: This is dif­fer­ent. You should treat it exact­ly the same. Anti­semitism is just as awful as racism.”

Christie gave a far dif­fer­ent answer, draw­ing on his expe­ri­ence as U.S. Attor­ney in New Jer­sey at the time of the Sep­tem­ber 11th attacks.

He talked with rab­bis, pledg­ing to pros­e­cute crimes against Jews, as well as Mus­lim lead­ers fear­ful of attacks on mosques.

“It takes lead­er­ship to do this,” said Christie. “You must work with both sides.”

It was a fit­ting choice of words.

The can­di­dates on stage have tried to “work with both sides,” mobi­liz­ing anti-Trump Repub­li­cans while peel­ing sup­port away from the front-run­ner. They’ve proven sin­gu­lar­ly inept at so doing, DeSan­tis more than any oth­er. The Trump base can­not be budged, and every effort brings ridicule from the frontrunner.

DeSan­tis did briefly go after Trump last night, for not par­tic­i­pat­ing in the debate and for a nation­al debt that bal­looned dur­ing his presidency.

Trump was, mean­while, coun­ter­pro­gram­ming with a ral­ly near­by in Hialeah. He was bring­ing Flori­da Sen­a­tor Rick Scott on board his campaign.