The Second G.O.P. Debate2nd Debate a Frenzy of Attacks as Non-Trump Rivals Try to Shake Up Race

In talking with Mr. Hannity in the spin room after the Republican presidential debate, Mr. Newsom made his distaste for Mr. DeSantis clear.

“You just don’t like him,” Mr. Hannity said, to which Mr. Newsom shot back: “Well, I don’t like people who demonize other people or go after vulnerable communities, but I also don’t like liars.”

He offered praise to Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, for her remarks during the debate on Mr. DeSantis’s record.

Much of the conversation focused on gas prices and the southern border, with Mr. Newsom defending his state’s high gas prices as being the result of oil companies “ripping us off.” But Mr. Hannity also pressed Mr. Newsom on his White House ambitions.

Mr. Newsom immediately pivoted to praising President Biden.

“He’s got an extraordinary record to run on, and I couldn’t be more proud,” Mr. Newsom said of the president. “Objectively, he was the winner tonight.”

Mr. Newsom was seen as a likely candidate if Mr. Biden decided not to run. But Mr. Biden has made clear that he will, and Mr. Newsom has given the president his full support.

Pressed by Mr. Hannity on if he would “ever accept the Democratic nomination to run for president in 2024 under any circumstances at all,” Mr. Newsom assertively said he would not.

“No. It’s a hypothetical. It’s ridiculous. Joe Biden is our president,” Mr. Newsom said.

Mr. Hannity replied: “You call me ridiculous, I’m going to make you pay for my In-N-Out burger.”

It’s true, as Mr. DeSantis noted, that Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment banning offshore oil and gas drilling in state waters in 2018 — the same election in which he was elected governor. Before the amendment passed, Mr. DeSantis had campaigned against fracking in Florida, calling it a “danger to our state that is not acceptable.”

Once governor, he issued an executive order directing the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to take “necessary actions to adamantly oppose all offshore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing in Florida.”

Ms. Calderón, 51, is a co-anchor of the nightly newscast of Univision, which co-hosted the debate with Fox News Media and broadcast the proceedings in Spanish. Univision producers retained editorial control over Ms. Calderón’s questions.

Early on, she pointed out that Ronald Reagan, whose presidential library hosted the event, had granted amnesty to nearly three million immigrants, and pressed former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey on a quip he made in 2015 about tracking immigrants the way FedEx tracks packages. (“What we have to do now is first treat this like the law enforcement problem it is,” Mr. Christie replied, without commenting on the FedEx remark.)

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida disputed Ms. Calderón’s question about his state’s new African American history standards, calling her premise a hoax “perpetrated by Kamala Harris.” (In fact, the quotation was drawn directly from the standards.) The question led to one of the more memorable moments of the evening: Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black candidate onstage, jumped in to declare, “There is not a redeeming quality in slavery,” drawing sustained applause from the audience.

Some conservatives watching along took umbrage. “Another weird question,” a reporter for the conservative Daily Signal wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, after Ms. Calderón asked former Vice President Mike Pence about violent hate crimes against L.G.B.T.Q. people.

More often than not, the candidates did not directly respond to Ms. Calderón’s inquiries. And several times, Ms. Calderón — along with her fellow moderators, Dana Perino of Fox News and Stuart Varney of Fox Business — ran into trouble maintaining order. The candidates repeatedly interrupted questions and spoke over one another, with Ms. Perino forced to issue a stern reminder of the rules.

“We’re going to have to cut your mic, and I don’t want to do that,” she warned at one point, which led to some settling down.

Ms. Calderón was born in Colombia and started her career as a broadcaster in Medellín. She joined Telemundo in 2001 and became a co-host of Univision’s evening news program in 2017. She also moderated a Democratic primary debate in March 2020, presiding along with CNN’s Dana Bash and Jake Tapper over the final meeting between Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The questions stood in stark contrast to those from last month’s debate in Milwaukee. There, candidates were tossed the conservative red meat that is more typical for such a forum, with topics including George Soros, abortion bans and the Jan. 6 attack.

But this time around, Fox wasn’t running the debate by itself. Sharing the moderator’s table was Univision’s Ilia Calderón, who seemed to push the focus outside the Republican comfort zone with questions about “a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants,” how to respond to the end of the DACA immigration policy, and bankruptcies caused by the soaring cost of health care.

“The richest 1 percent now controls one-fifth of all income,” the moderator and Fox Business host Stuart Varney asked former Vice President Mike Pence. “You said you side with American workers. But you also support how these companies operate. Which is it?”

Dana Perino, who served as White House press secretary under President George W. Bush and now works as a host on Fox News, struck a similar note in asking Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina where he stood on the rising cost of child care.

“You had an effort to broaden eligibility for child care assistance; that failed,” she said. “For the moms and dads out there who are worried, what can you tell them if you were not able to get that through Congress — how could you do it as president?”

Most pointed throughout the evening, however, was Ms. Calderón.

What, she asked Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, “is your specific plan to curb gun violence?”

But the sharp questions did not always draw sharp answers.

Mr. Burgum, who signed a proclamation in 2021 naming North Dakota a “Second Amendment sanctuary state,” turned to a familiar retort. The solution to gun violence, he said, was to “get back to behavioral health and mental health.”

President Biden has enacted multiple policies and regulations to phase out the fossil fuels that are chiefly responsible for climate change. During his State of the Union address this year, though, the president said, “We’re still going to need oil and gas for a while.”

Under Mr. Biden, U.S. output is still set to hit annual production records in 2023 and 2024. The Energy Information Administration estimates that, this year, domestic oil production will surpass its record high, set under the Trump administration, and continue to climb into 2024. Natural gas production, which reached a record high in 2021, is also expected to continue to grow this year. The statement also ignores the extensive investments the Biden administration has made in renewable energy.

The attacks were broad and searing. Mr. Ramaswamy was hit on his business dealings with China, his pledges to cut off aid to Ukraine and even his presence on TikTok.

“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber,” Ms. Haley said, criticizing his use of TikTok.

In response to a question about why he disagreed with Mr. Ramaswamy’s pledge to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, Mr. Scott turned to Mr. Ramaswamy’s last debate performance.

“We think about the fact that Vivek said we are all good people, and I appreciate that, because at the last debate he said we were all bought and paid for,” Mr. Scott said, adding that he did not understand how Mr. Ramaswamy could say that when he himself did business with the “Chinese Communist Party and the same people that funded Hunter Biden millions of dollars.”

Mr. Ramaswamy argued that he had pulled his company out of China when other C.E.O.s had not. But Mr. Pence dug in further, bringing up the fact that Mr. Ramaswamy had acknowledged he did not vote until relatively recently.

“Let me say, I’m glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in 2018 in China,” Mr. Pence said. “That must’ve been around the time you decided to start voting in presidential elections.”