By Andrea Shalal and Jarrett Renshaw
(Reuters) -Former President Donald&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;skipped the first Republican debate of the 2024 election on Wednesday, but the&nbsp;campaign&nbsp;of Democratic President Joe&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;was hard at work keeping the&nbsp;focus&nbsp;on the former White House occupant.
Minutes before the eight&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;challengers began their debate, a&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;ad on the Fox News Channel broadcasting the event featured an image of a tired-looking&nbsp;Trump, and&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;saying: "There is no quit in America."
Much could change in the more than 14 months before the 2024 election, but for now a&nbsp;Biden-Trump&nbsp;rematch appears most likely.
Trump, the overwhelming front-runner for the Republican nomination, did a pre-recorded interview with former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
His name only arose nearly an hour into the Fox News debate when moderators asked candidates whether they would still support&nbsp;Trump, who faces multiple indictments, if he were convicted.
While&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;has rarely mentioned&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;in recent months, his&nbsp;campaign&nbsp;mocked what it called&nbsp;Trump's "softball 'interview'" in a statement before it was broadcast and accused MAGA&nbsp;Republicans&nbsp;at the debate of supporting his "extreme and unpopular agenda" and doing&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;"impressions."
Biden&nbsp;supporters and the&nbsp;campaign&nbsp;pushed the message through the debate.
U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin, the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said on X that&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;and&nbsp;Republicans&nbsp;added $7.8 trillion to the national debt.
"They gave the store away to the super-rich and spent us into the ground," he wrote.
Biden&nbsp;posted a clip of former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley who during the debate also criticized&nbsp;Trump's debt policies.&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;added the statement: "What she said."
No one had done more to open the door "for extreme abortion bans nationwide than&nbsp;Trump," a later&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;campaign&nbsp;statement said.
The&nbsp;campaign&nbsp;circulated a mobile billboard around the debate venue featuring "Dark Brandon," a cartoon meme of&nbsp;Biden, criticizing&nbsp;Republicans&nbsp;on abortion rights.
The&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;campaign&nbsp;on Wednesday started its third major paid ad&nbsp;campaign&nbsp;of the election cycle, a $25 million effort targeting eight battleground states that includes the first messages aimed at Latino and Black media.
The&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;campaign&nbsp;says it has yet to consider whether&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;will debate&nbsp;Trump, or what it means if&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;decides against debating in the general election in November 2024.
(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons and Howard Goller)

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As Republicans debated, Biden campaign put focus on Trump