At the first debate, Vivek Ramaswamy attacks nearly every other GOP primary candidate — except for Trump

• With Trump absent, Vivek Ramaswamy was the center of attention at the first GOP presidential debate.
• He argued with high-profile candidates all evening but didn't speak a word against Trump.

Political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy quickly made his presence known at the first Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, drawing in heaps of applause from the GOP-leaning audience at several points through the evening.

But while he may have impressed the crowd, he turned himself into the #1 target of Republican presidential hopefuls by exchanging barbs with almost every one of them — all except for former President Donald Trump.

From the very get-go, right after Ramaswamy gave his introduction and answered the first question from the moderators, Vice President Mike Pence took the opportunity to attack Ramaswamy's lack of political experience, saying that "now is not the time for on-the-job training."

"We don't need to bring in a rookie, we don't need to bring in people without experience," Pence said.

Following Pence's response, Ramaswamy proceeded to go on the attack for the rest of the evening, making soundbite worthy quips denigrating his fellow candidates, like telling Pence the USSR no longer exists, that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is gunning for an MSNBC contributor position, or that former Gov. Nikki Haley's likely future was on the board of a defense contractor instead of the White House.

Christie, who was widely expected to unleash his disdain for Trump during the debate, ultimately focused his attention on Ramaswamy during part of the evening for sounding like "ChatGPT," calling him "the same type of amateur" as former Democratic President Barack Obama.

Ramaswamy later took the position that he was the "only person on the stage who isn't bought and paid for," before going on to say that he firmly believes the "climate change agenda" is a hoax and that "more people are dying of bad climate change policies" than climate change itself, leading to an outpouring of boos from the audience and forcing the candidates to a contentious debate on whether or not the climate crisis is caused by human activity.

Despite his repeated back-and-forths with the slate of presidential hopefuls, Ramaswamy, who's sitting in third place in an average of national polls from FiveThirtyEight, never went after the candidate who's vastly ahead of everyone else: Donald Trump.

Instead, he did quite the opposite, going out of his way to be the first to say he'd support Trump as the Republican nominee even if he's convicted in one of his many grand jury indictments, and would pardon him if elected president. He then proceeded to press Pence to make a commitment to pardon Trump, if elected.

Pence ultimately noted that in his experience as the former governor of Indiana, pardons usually follow "a finding of guilt and contrition" by the defendant.

Trump, who didn't appear at the debate in lieu of making an appearance in a pre-taped Tucker Carlson interview, took notice of Ramaswamy's loyalty Wednesday evening, crowning him the night's winner on Truth Social.

"This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH," Trump wrote. "Thank you Vivek!"