Everything you need to know

Because it's irrelevant. The point is that 6 candidates raised their hands. Which not only includes those leading in the polls behind Trump but also Mike Pence himself!
- What is being comunicated in the image is that every republican nominee says they will support Trump. That is simply a lie; and the image was cropped specifically to make that lie.
Agreed I would have preferred an uncropped imagine and would have still gotten a message across about US political systems.
You mean the two who won't get any votes?

Part of what makes that whole thing weird is that in order to take part in the debate, they had to sign a statement saying that they would support the eventual GOP candidate. That's why Trump wasn't allowed to participate: he wants to option to go rogue if he doesn't get the nomination. Typically, though, I'd expect him to just lie if he wanted to go that route.

For everyone at the debate, though, if they said that they wouldn't support Trump as the nominee, they would be going against the word of the document they just signed. Definitely a lose-lose situation for them. (Though they are the ones who created the Trump problem in the first place, so it serves them right)

Chris Christie signed the pledge, and stated that he intends to break it if Trump wins. Back in 2016, Trump signed the pledge, then did not raise his hand when the question was asked in a debate.
- also i wouldnt blame anyone here who said no i wouldnt support trump, besides the obvious (t)reason, the fucker isnt even following the same rules as they are. hes not there raising his hand in support of the republican party and their choices if they dont involve him. he gets to say i wont show up and do the same but then they have to be like yeah i will support him if for some reason this is all for nothing and everyone is wasting their time right now. fuck that. if he somehow gets the nomination anyway i hope they all enjoy their faces being eaten.....
You think Trump didn’t participate because of a pledge?! Lmao, c’mon.
- I really think he didn't participate cause he has nothing to gain from attending them. He is missing out on having his people in the spin room, though

Did this seriously fucking happen?

This picture does cut off the two candidates on the left who didn't raise their hands, and I'm not 100% Pence raised his hand in supporting Trump but don't remember. Otherwise more or less accurate.
- This picture does cut off the two candidates on the left who didn’t raise their hands, and I’m not 100% Pence raised his hand in supporting Trump but don’t remember. Otherwise more or less accurate.
  jfc. 12 solid years of trying to follow this fucking shitshow of a country and I just can't handle it these days.
- Pence had some hesitation, but like the rest, he buckled to the cheers of the crowd and raised his hand.

Are there transcripts of these debates available? I don’t want to watch an hour of trash

Yes, here it is:
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGLLLLLL Nazi noises
No full transcripts I was able to find yet (only found 2020 and earlier transcripts online). Did find some summaries and take-aways:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/08/23/republican-gop-debate-live-updates/70653558007/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/us/politics/republican-debate-takeaways.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/23/first-republican-debate-highlights-00112617
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/24/1195589204/up-first-briefing-gop-debate-trump-to-surrender-russia-plane-crash-mystery
and
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/24/1195577120/republican-debate-candidates-trump-pence-ramaswamy-haley-christie-milwaukee-2024
Edit: Regarding the allusions from the meme I the OP:
From the NPR article:
Surprisingly, perhaps, almost all of the candidates stood up for former Vice President Mike Pence and said he did the right thing on Jan. 6 in his ceremonial role in counting and recording the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Pence noted that Trump asked him to reject the votes and "asked me to put him over the Constitution, and I chose the Constitution."
From the Politico article:
Asked if they would support Trump as the party’s nominee even if he was convicted of a crime, 6 of 8 candidates raised their hands — with varying degrees of enthusiasm — with only Christie and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson indicating they would not support the former president again.
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/fox-news-republican-presidential-primary-debate-transcript
I missed the first half of the debate last night. The second was so painful to watch because they, of course, were all ignoring rules and talking over each other.

"Who here is campaigning to be VP?"

Was this a debate or an advertisment for trump?

It boiled down to there being no real policy to improve the country, just rhetoric and culture war bullshit and pandering about God and men in sports.
The two candidates who said out loud that they don't support Trump, Hutchinson and Christi, got booed by the crowd.
It's hilarious to me that not supporting Trump will kill a Republican's campaign, but supporting him means you think he deserves the nomination and so therefore killing your campaign. They created this Trump problem, now they need to eat shit as it destroys them.
It was exclusively aired on Fox News and Fox Business…
- They also streamed it on their website. Would have been good for it to be on broadcast tv, but the barrier to entry wasn’t that high
- Trump accuses Fox of not being supportive of him. For a lot of the far right, Fox is too mainstream.

Who thinks climate change is caused by human activity? - Desantis immediately derailed this question, I think only about half actually ended up answering

Also the two on the left are cut off
- As if they fucking matter. There's literally nothing that will prevent Trump from getting the nomination, short of his death.

you need to make a better effort at seperating the two pictures, i was not sure where the first ended and the second ended
otherwise good Meme. like it a lot. upvoted.

The rules don't matter, power is all they care about. Acting all astonished every time conservatives ignore laws is naive

And more importantly, what's right also doesn't matter to them.
I call this out because sometimes rules and laws are immoral and thus it's sometimes good to ignore those rules. But this isn't one of those times.

Thanks! I think most people get that. I was just thinking if memes should come with explanations and disclaimers now days? lol
- ITT: People who get their news from memes apparently.
  You did nothing wrong. If people want to base their votes on what they see in memes then... Oh wait there's already a political party for that. They just had a debate the other night.

Traitors, the lot of them.

Five candidates. All fucking pieces of shit.

So even if you jail him or bar him from re-election, Trumps just going to have puppet run for him on the outside?

That'd almost be worse because he won't be bound to any of the rules of a president, he'd be able to pardon himself by proxy, and not have any accountability for the puppets actions.

Wait, they did a GOP debate without trump? Was he busy or something?

Yeah he's busy. Busy betraying his country
He announced he won't take part in the debates
- Partly because he didn't want to take part, but also because he wasn't allowed to take part. Participation was dependent on signing the RNC oath of fealty
- God it feels good to know that his announcements don't reach me anymore. I literally don't know what he's up to until I incidentally hear in the news that hes being charged with something.
There's zero benefit to Trump in participating in the debates. He's way, way out in front of the other Republicans, it could only serve to hurt him. Instead he did a taped Tucker Carlson interview that I think they aired at the same time (I didn't watch either one).

Man Lemmy is full of people who are autistic as fuck and suck at jokes or are pedantic as fuck.

Funny and too true.

Is that real? I'm 99.999% sure it is, but I'd like confirmation.

I think a lot of people are taking this very literally and some are claiming I'm misleading people. For context, the top portion of the picture did not happen exactly like that. They each individually said that Pence did the right thing by essentially choosing the constitution and his oath of office over Trumps request that he violate it. There was no hand raising for that question. The second half of the image was when they were asked if they would raise their hands to indicate if they would support Trump if he were the nominee. I cropped out Asa Hutchison and Chris Christie who did not raise their hands. I'm getting some flack for that but whatever... It's a meme. I'm not a reputable news source or a reporter. I just made this because I thought it was ridiculous.
- Thanks.