GOP presidential hopefuls Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are back on the debate stage Monday night to appeal to voters just five days before the Iowa caucuses.
Former President Donald Trump was the only other primary candidate to meet the 10% polling benchmark to qualify for the debate, but as with the previous four debates, he declined to participate. Instead, Trump will appear on a Fox News town hall in Iowa at the same time.
CNN is hosting the debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, starting at 9 p.m. EST. CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are moderating the debate.
Neither former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie nor entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy qualified for the debate, and Christie formally withdrew from the race Wednesday, just hours before the debate was to begin.
“It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination,” Christie said during an event Wednesday in Windham, New Hampshire.
Though Ramaswamy won’t be on the stage, viewers of the debate will reportedly have the opportunity to see him in a paid ad during the program.
Fox News exclusively reported Wednesday that Ramaswamy will run a campaign ad during the debate telling viewers to “turn this s— off” and accusing the “mainstream media” of “trying to rig the Iowa GOP caucus in favor of the corporate candidates who they can control.”
Ramaswamy also hosted a town hall live Wednesday night with podcast host Tim Pool.
Trump continues to hold a sizable lead in the polls, with Haley and DeSantis trading places for second or third place, depending upon the poll.
The following are highlights from the final debate before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15.
UPDATE: 10:56 Bathrooms
When Haley was governor of South Carolina, DeSantis said, she “killed” a bill to prevent men from using women’s bathrooms.
“She didn’t fight for the kids,” DeSantis said, “she caved to the Chamber of Commerce.”
“First of all, that was 10 years ago,” Haley fired back. “We had a handful of kids that may have had that issue, and what I made clear at that time in the state is: Girls go into girls’ bathrooms, boys into boys’ bathrooms. If there are exceptions, they use a private bathroom.”
UPDATE: 10:40 Israel and Gaza
Asked about their stances on Israel’s response to the brutal Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, both Haley and DeSantis expressed staunch support for Israel. Tapper specifically asked the candidates whether they would support “the mass removal of Palestinians from Gaza.”
DeSantis responded that “we’ve got to support Israel, in word and in deed, in public and in private.”
“They need to be able to finish the job,” he said. “Joe Biden is kneecapping them. He’ll say one thing, then he goes and his base doesn’t like Israel, so he’s got to do all these other things. This is a time to recognize that they suffered the most deaths of Jews, murder of Jews, since the Holocaust. Hamas wants a second Holocaust. They want to annihilate the state of Israel.”
To be a good ally, the Florida governor said, the United States should back Israel in the decisions it is making in regard to Gaza. He then criticized Haley for formerly supporting the “two-state solution” for Israel and Gaza.
“We also have a disagreement, Governor Haley and I, when she was at the United Nations, she supported the idea of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs,” he said. “The problem with that is the Palestinian Arabs don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
“So, doing a two-state solution doesn’t create something that’s going to lead to a lasting peace. It creates a steppingstone for Israel’s destruction,” he added. “So, under no circumstances as president am I going to pressure Israel to risk their security to do a so-called two-state solution. She was wrong when she embraced that, and we’re right to say, ‘We trust Israel to make these decisions.’ They’re a good ally of ours. We should trust their judgment on these sensitive issues.”
Haley responded by stressing her support for Israel, saying they are “the tip of the spear when it comes to defeating terrorism.”
“It has never been that Israel needs America,” she said. “It has always been that America needs Israel.”
“When I was at the United Nations,” she said of her stint as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the Trump administration, “I fought every day for Israel, and if you would have listened to what I said at the United Nations, a two-state solution wasn’t something that was possible because Israel would always come to the table and the Palestinians wouldn’t. But right now, we have to make sure that Israel has the support that it needs. There should be three things: Give Israel whatever it wants to get the job done. Two, eliminate Hamas once and for all. And three, do whatever it takes to bring the hostages home.”
Haley then took a swipe at DeSantis, accusing him of hypocrisy for his association with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.: “But it’s really rich that Ron is going to act like he suddenly cares for Israel when he brought the person to Iowa that is the most anti-Israel Republican in the state, the person that went and voted against Israel’s right to exist in Congress, the person that voted with the [far-left Democratic] Squad against antisemitism on college campuses.”
Massie responded from his campaign account on “X,” saying, “I’m living in Nikki Haley’s head rent free … and trust me, there’s plenty of empty space in here!”
UPDATE: 10:19 On the Border Crisis
Tapper asked DeSantis how he would address the border crisis and how he would pay for a wall on the southern border.
DeSantis said that he would build the wall and “actually have Mexico pay for it.” The Florida governor said he would do that by charging fees on remittances that immigrants send back to their home countries.
He said that Trump deported fewer people than former President Barack Obama and that Biden has allowed in 8 million illegal immigrants.
“They all have to go back. We have to enforce the rule of law in this country,” he said.
DeSantis then cited how children attending a school in Brooklyn, New York, were forced to switch to online learning so the building could be used to house illegal immigrants.
“Talk about putting America last. You’re putting these kids out of an education because you can’t control the border?” DeSantis asked rhetorically.
He said that Biden had failed to secure the border, but that Haley can’t be trusted on illegal immigration.
“That’s like having the fox guard the henhouse,” DeSantis said, then followed up by saying that she’s weak on immigration and “bankrolled by people” who are for open borders. He also criticized Haley for saying that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be called “criminals.”
Haley said she didn’t think we should let them into the country.
“When I was governor of South Carolina, we passed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country,” she said. “Obama sued us over it, and we won. We fought Obama on illegal immigration. We fought Obama on migrant kids. We fought Obama on Syrian refugees. We fought Obama on Guantanamo Bay prisoners.”
Haley said that the United States is a country of laws and the “second we stop being a country of laws is the second we give up everything this country was founded on.”
The former South Carolina governor said that in addition to those tough immigration laws, she passed E-Verify, a policy that requires businesses to confirm that workers have a legal right to work in the U.S.
She said that the U.S. needs to have more Border Patrol agents on the ground, that we need to finish the wall, that we restore the “Remain in Mexico” policy of the Trump administration so that “no one steps foot” illegally on American soil, and that we need to switch from “catch and release” to “catch and deport.”
UPDATE: 9:52: Weaponization of the DOJ
DeSantis stressed the importance of ending “the weaponization of government.”
“The IRS has been weaponized against conservatives going back to the Obama administration,” he explained. “I was there for that. No one has been held accountable for doing that. You look at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice. The weaponization of federal power ends the day I become the president of the United States.
“There is going to be a new sheriff in town,” he added. “We’re going to restore the constitutional accountability that our Founding Fathers envisioned when they formatted the Constitution.”
The Florida governor said that he often speaks with “folks” who deal with “overbearing federal agencies,” promising to not only “reduce the size of government,” but also “to reduce the scope of government.”
“And in Florida, I’ve actually delivered on this,” he added. “Florida has the lowest percentage of state government workers per capita in the country, and the cost of our state government employees is the lowest in the country. No wonder why we’re paying down debt while we’re cutting taxes for people. That’s the way you do it.”
UPDATE 9:50 p.m.: DeSantis touted dropping the sales tax on family items.
“I also think it’s important that we lift people up, so in Florida, we eliminated all sales tax on every baby item, diapers, wipes, strollers, cribs,” he said. “We want families to be able to prosper in this country.”
He lamented the “breakdown in the American family,” and said, “We need to make it easier for people to raise children in this country.”
Last May, DeSantis signed a $2.7 billion tax cut bill that permanently exempted baby and toddler necessities from sales taxes. According to his office, the bill included a permanent exemption for strollers, cribs, diapers, and baby wipes.
The law, HB 7063, exempts baby cribs, including baby playpens, baby play yards; baby strollers; baby safety gates; baby monitors; child safety cabinet locks and latches, and electrical socket covers; bicycle child-carrier seats; baby exercisers; breast pumps; baby wipes; changing tables and changing pads; diapers; baby and toddler clothing; and more.
UPDATE 9:40: America must end all “normal trade relations with China,” Haley said, until fentanyl stops flowing from China to the drug cartels who smuggle it to America.
Haley claimed that Trump “didn’t deal with China when it came to stealing intellectual property, the fact they gave us [COVID-19], the fact that they have gone and continued to put up Chinese police stations and continue to threaten our military.”
DeSantis fired back, saying, “When Nikki Haley was governor of South Carolina, she was the No. 1 governor in America for Republicans of bringing China into her state.”
The Florida governor claimed that Haley has said China is a friend to America and argued that “bringing China into the state of South Carolina” was Haley’s “No. 1 achievement as governor.”
“I banned China from buying land in our state, and we kicked them out of our universities,” DeSantis said of his policies in Florida, a reference to Confucius Institutes.
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