Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley pointed fingers and compared their respective political records during Wednesday’s fourth Republican primary debate — while trying to duck the mudslinging and character attacks from the other two candidates on the stage.
DeSantis made an aggressive start to his evening at the Moody Music Building in Tuscaloosa, Ala., by calling for the eventual GOP presidential nominee “to be willing to stand strong” and “beat” the opposition.
“You have other candidates up here like Nikki Haley. She caves anytime the left comes after [her] — anytime the media [attacks],” he said, adding later that she would also “cave to those big donors when it counts.”
The Florida governor repeatedly sought to contrast his record with the former South Carolina governor on education, economics and individual liberties, while teaming up at times with biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to continue the attack on Haley.
“We are in jeopardy of being the first generation of Americans to leave to our kids and grandkids an America less prosperous and less free than the one we inherited. I refuse to sit idly by and let that happen,” DeSantis said in his closing statement.
“But we got to have people that are going to be willing to fight the people that are doing this to us. It can’t be these establishment Republicans that just came at the first sign of opposition. I’ll fight for you.”
Christie and Ramaswamy go a fourth round
The highlight — or lowlight — of a tumultuous first hour was Christie going off on Ramaswamy after the 38-year-old said the former ambassador to the United Nations couldn’t name any Ukrainian provinces.
“This is the fourth debate. The fourth debate that you will be voted in the first 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blowhard in America,” Christie said, setting off a near-screaming match with his rival.
“We’re now 25 minutes into this debate and he has insulted Nikki Haley’s basic intelligence, not her positions, her basic intelligence,” Christie went on. “She is a smart accomplished woman. You should stop insulting her.”
“First of all, Chris Christie also doesn’t know what provinces in eastern Ukraine he actually wants to fight for,” Ramaswamy shot back before suggesting that the bulk of Christie’s “foreign policy experience was closing a bridge from New Jersey to New York.”
“So do everybody a favor, just walk yourself off that stage, enjoy a nice meal and get the hell out of this race.
Haley accused of caving on transgender issues, corporate influence
The debate calmed slightly in the second hour, during which DeSantis received his biggest cheer of the night in response to a question about hormone treatments and gender-reassignment surgeries for minors.
“You do not have the right to abuse your kids,” he said in response to Christie saying he would defer to parents on the issue. “This is cutting off their genitals. This is mutilating these minors. These are irreversible procedures.”
“I signed legislation in Florida banning the mutilation of minors because it is wrong,” he added. “Nikki disagrees with me. She opposes the bill that we did to ban that.”
“I do not,” Haley interjected.
“You said the law shouldn’t get involved with it,” DeSantis replied. “This flows from what she did as governor of South Carolina, you know, they had a bill to try to say that men shouldn’t go into girls’ bathrooms, and she killed that bill, and she bragged that she killed that bill, even to this day she bragged that.”
“I don’t think that men should be going into little girls’ bathrooms; I think it’s wrong; and I think we have every right to protect them from that,” he said, earning another round of applause.
DeSantis also roped in Ramaswamy and Haley in his attack on corporate ESG investments.
“Vivek, he wrote a book talking about ESG and these woke corporations and BlackRock,” he said. “The idea that I want to do that — in Florida, they were managing part of our pension and then when they did the ESG, I took $2 billion away from BlackRock. We took action.”
“This ESG — they call it environment, social, governance [investing] — and against Nikki is meeting with all these people,” he added, “they want to use economic power to impose a left-wing agenda on this country.”
“The next president of the United States needs to be able to go to that office on Day One and end ESG — and the fact of the matter is we know from her history Nikki will cave to those big donors when it counts.”
Earlier, DeSantis and Ramaswamy had also tangled with Haley over her approach to online privacy after she suggested all social media users should have to identify themselves.76
The only person more fascist than the Biden regime now is Nikki Haley [who] thinks the government should identify every individual with an ID,” Ramaswamy said.
“That is not freedom — that’s fascism. And she should come nowhere near the … power level in the White House.”
Having surged in national polls in recent weeks, Haley deflected the criticism when answering.
“I would be happy to, and I love all the attention, fellas. Thank you for that,” she responded, saying she would “fight for freedom of speech for Americans” and had intended to target malign foreign actors.
“She said, ‘I want your name,’” DeSantis cut in. “And then she got real serious blowback, and understandably so, because it’d be a massive expansion of government.”
Attacks on Trump ramp up
Three of the four contenders also ramped up attacks on the absent frontrunner of the 2024 primary: former President Donald Trump.
Christie, who has made direct verbal attacks on the 77-year-old ex-president a feature of his campaign, opened his first question by declaring he was “the only person on the stage who’s telling the truth, and the only person who is taking on what needs to be taken on.”
“I look at my watch and see that we’re 17 minutes into this debate. And … we’ve had these three acting as if the race is between the four of us,” he told the audience, before denouncing Trump as a “bully” and “dictator.”
“I understand why these three are tempted to not say anything about it. Maybe it’s because they have future aspirations. Maybe those future aspirations are now or maybe they’re four years from now. But the fact of the matter is, the truth needs to be told,” Christie added. “He is unfit.”
But the onetime Trump ally wasn’t the only contestant to knock the former president.
Both Haley and DeSantis accused the 45th president of having made irresponsible decisions while commander in chief about the national debt and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As much as everybody wants to talk about how Donald Trump had a good economy —$9 trillion in debt he did just in four years and we’re all paying the price of that, including those mortgage prices,” Haley said, inflating the actual $7.8 trillion added to the debt during his tenure in office.
While DeSantis blasted “Republicans in Washington” for having driven up inflation and interest rates, he leveled his biggest attacks against Trump over the former president’s COVID policies and age.
“Father Time is undefeated; the idea that we’re going to put someone up there that’s almost 80 and there’s going to be no effects for that, we all know that’s not true,” DeSantis said, before addressing Christie’s “dictatorial” concerns.
“The media is making a big deal about what he’s said. I would remind people that is not how he governed,” he went on. “He didn’t even fire Dr. Fauci or Christopher Wray. He didn’t clean up the Swamp. He said he was going to drain it, he did not drain it.”
Christie’s Trump-focused tactics wore on the audience and his closing remarks drew boos — not for the first time during the event.
“Picture in your minds Election Day. You’ll all be heading to the polls to vote. And that’s something that Donald Trump will not be able to do. Because he will be convicted of felonies before then,” he said.
“Here’s the bottom line, you could go boo about it all you like and continue to deny reality, but if we deny reality as a party, we’re gonna have four more years of Joe Biden.”
