Half of the four Republican presidential candidates in an Alabama debate Wednesday night attacked former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is fighting for the coveted second spot in the nomination race.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy joined forces early in the debate to continually attack Haley on issues like transgender fitness care, the Ukrainian and Israeli war efforts, and her on business. and wealthy donors.
Haley praised the approach.
“I love all the attention, guys,” he said. Thank you for that. “
The extended exchange that defined the debate’s first half-hour segment — and reemerged throughout the two-hour event hosted by NewsNation — frustrated the fourth candidate on stage, Chris Christie. The former New Jersey governor has made criticism of former President Donald Trump, the far-and-away leading candidate in the field, the cornerstone of his campaign. Trump, as in the previous three debates sanctioned by the Republican National Committee, refused to take part.
Christie criticized the others on stage at the event at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, all of whom are polling better than he is, for not taking on Trump. He bemoaned in his first remarks of the evening that Haley, DeSantis and Ramaswamy were too focused on each other and hadn’t even mentioned Trump.
“For us to spend 17 minutes arguing about the guy who has all those flashy numbers (in the polls) that you guys talked about is ridiculous,” Christie told the moderators, who had cited Trump’s huge lead in the polls.
“The fact of the matter is he is unfit to be president,” he added.
Trump garners nearly 60% of GOP voter support, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average.
Instead, Trump made the impression Tuesday at a Fox News town hall meeting. Host Sean Hannity called on Trump, who played a central role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U. S. Capitol, to allay fears that he would not deliver for Democrats. rules in his second term.
Trump responded that he would not be a dictator, “except on day one,” when he hinted that he would wield excessive powers all the way to the border and expand fossil fuel development.
“We closed the border and drilled, drilled, drilled,” he said. After that, I will be a dictator. “
Haley was the target of attacks by DeSantis and Ramaswamy in their first remarks of the debate, as they accused her of being in the pocket of Wall Street and criticized her foreign policy positions.
Although Trump is far ahead of the rest, the race for second place has been tightening for months as Haley’s effects on the polls have largely advanced at the expense of DeSantis. Although DeSantis still leads Haley in top national polls, the two were tied at 16% in a recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll.
Haley led DeSantis in recent polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina and earned a high profile from Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-affiliated PAC.
Ramaswamy also criticized Larry Fink’s Haley, chief executive of BlackRock, the U. S. -based multinational investment control firm, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, whom he called “George Soros Junior,” as well as his previous board position. after leaving the United Nations.
The businesswoman said a “system” candidate like Haley would change her policy stances to align with big business campaigning.
Haley denied the accusation, saying that these backers support her because of her positions, not because she changed them. The former U.N. ambassador pointed to her decision to leave Boeing after the business sought a “corporate bailout” following the COVID-19 pandemic, a decision she did not agree with.
“There’s nothing in what he’s saying,” Haley responded. “And when it comes to the donors around me, they’re just jealous. “
DeSantis also criticized Haley’s relationship with multinational corporations, saying that she would support businesses like BlackRock that want to use “economic power to impose a left-wing agenda on this country.”
He pointed to a Florida law he signed that prohibits environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, investing when a company considers non-financial environmental, social, and governmental issues when making investments, for state public investments.
“The next president of the United States needs to be able to go to that office on day one and end ESG,” DeSantis said. “And the fact of the matter is, we know from her history, Nikki will cave to those big donors when it counts.”
Both applicants also criticized Haley for saying she would require verification of the nominative identity of other people posting on social media.
Haley said on Fox News in November that she would require social media corporations to share their algorithms with the U. S. government, and that she would require call verification to deal with “national security” considerations with Russian, Iranian and Chinese robots.
The former South Carolina governor defended her comments during the debate, saying her position was aimed at getting rid of foreign influence on social media, not restricting America’s rights.
“As a mom, do I think social media would be more civilized if we went there and had people’s names next to us?”Haley said, “yes, I think so, because I think we have too much cyberbullying. I think we have child pornography and all that stuff. But having said that, I never said that the government asks for anybody’s name.
DeSantis and Ramaswamy continually addressed Haley’s complaint in the debate. Ramaswamy, who has been feuding with the former ambassador since the first debate in August, held up a piece of paper that read “NIKKI = CORRUPT. “
She also spoke with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman who is a social media personality, and said Haley uses “identity politics” to advance her campaign.
Haley declined to respond to his complaint later in the debate, saying, “It’s worth my time. “
Christie is the only contestant who did not attack Haley on the debate stage, but protected her from Ramaswamy’s attack.
“Nikki and I disagree on some issues,” Christie said. “But I’ll tell you one thing: I’ve known her for 12 years (which is longer than she started voting as the number one Republican nominee) and while we don’t agree on some issues, and we don’t agree on who will be the president of the Republican Congress, what we do agree on, is that she’s an intelligent and well-rounded woman and that you avoid insulting her.
While defending Haley, the former New Jersey governor lashed out at DeSantis for not directly answering questions posed by debate moderators, as if Trump had mental compatibility with the president because he would be older than President Joe in his second term. Biden was in 2021.
“Is it compatible or not?” said Christie. I’ll admit it: you’re in good shape, Ron, you’re a new generation. . . That’s my challenge with my 3 colleagues, they’re afraid to offend. “
Christie also consistently focused on Trump, saying the former president’s claim that he is a dictator is no joke.
“It’s absolutely predictable,” he said. She made it very clear if there was any mystery to what she wanted to do. “
“He’s an angry, bitter guy who now needs the president back because he needs revenge on anyone who disagrees with him, on everyone who has tried to hold him accountable for his own conduct and for any and all of those policies. “What he’s talking about is carrying out a plan of retaliation,” he added.
Christie predicted that Trump would be unable to vote for himself because he’d be convicted of federal felonies before Election Day.
Trump faces federal charges in two and state charges in two others. All criminal charges are expected to go to trial next year.
DeSantis, who was Trump’s best friend as a member of the U. S. House of Representatives and enlisted the then-president’s help in his gubernatorial bid, and Haley, who was ambassador to the United Nations during Trump’s tenure, took some Trump photographs. but he declined opportunities to go. more difficult for the former president.
When asked if Trump was unworthy to serve because of his age, DeSantis called for a new generation of leaders, but did not answer directly.
“Father Time is undefeated,” DeSantis said. The concept that we’re going to put someone who’s almost 80 years old up there and it’s not going to have any effect?We all know that’s not true.
Christie challenged DeSantis to the yes or no question.
“The rest of the speech is interesting, but totally inadequate,” he said.
Haley praised Trump’s record on trade but said his taste for government was unproductive.
“We have to stop the chaos,” she said. “But you can’t defeat Democrat chaos with Republican chaos, and that’s what Donald Trump gives us. My approach is different: no drama, no vendettas, no whining.”
Foreign policy remained a point of disagreement between Haley and Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy, who has expressed isolationist views in previous debates, renewed his proposal to seek a peace deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, criticizing Haley for not knowing the names of the Ukrainian provinces she was purporting to protect.
“Delight in foreign policy is not the same as wisdom in foreign policy,” he said.
Christie jumped in to defend Haley, blasting Ramaswamy’s pugilistic debate style.
“This is the fourth debate that you would be voted in the first 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blowhard in America,” he said.
Ramaswamy also said that, as president, he would tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States “supports” Israel in defeating the Hamas terror group, but that he would be concerned about the war.
“As the next president, my only ethical duty is to you, the other people of this country,” he said.
DeSantis responded that U. S. citizens were among the victims of Hamas’ wonderful attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Haley also argued for a more robust role in global conflicts, saying the U.S. should support Ukraine, Israel and — potentially — Taiwan against an alliance of Russia, Iran and China.
“There’s an explanation for why the Ukrainians need the Israelis,” Haley said. “Because they know that if Iran wins, Russia will win. “
The issue of allowing minors to transition, either socially or medically, was also a hot topic on the debate stage.
DeSantis and Ramaswamy both called for banning gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth, even with parental permission. Minors should not be allowed to get procedures like mastectomies, hormone replacement therapy and in rare cases, genital surgeries, the two candidates said, with DeSantis calling the medical interventions “mutilation.”
The moderators called on Christie to protect his position on procedures for transgender youth and allow students to socially transition (a name or pronoun different from the one they were given at birth) at school without parental permission.
Christie denied claims that it did not require notification of parents if a child used another name or pronoun at school, but said it would not restrict the right of parents to offer possible options for their minor children.
“Every once in a while, parents are going to make decisions that we disagree with,” Christie said. “But the minute you start to take those rights away from parents, you don’t know, that slippery slope, what rights are going to be taken away next.”
DeSantis interrupted Christie by telling her that parents “have no right to abuse their children. “
“It’s mutilating those miners, they’re irreversible procedures,” DeSantis said. Array. I signed a law in Florida that prohibits the mutilation of minors because it’s a mistake. We cannot allow this to happen in this country.
The Florida governor said he believes Christie has an “honest position” on the issue of transgender youth transitioning, but he also criticized Haley for not enacting the so-called “bathroom bill,” which bans the use of gendered amenities such as bathrooms and school locker rooms. other people of the opposite biological sex, regardless of their gender identity or legal sex.
Haley said that her position has changed on the issue of bathroom use by transgender people since she was governor of South Carolina.
“When the bathroom situation came up, maybe we had a handful of young people who were suffering from a challenge, and I said, ‘We don’t want to involve the government in this matter, but the children go to the children’s bathroom, the women go to the women’s toilets,’ and if there are more challenges, they use a personal toilet,” she said. “Now, ten years later, we see that this challenge has skyrocketed. “
He also claimed that DeSantis was being hypocritical, claiming that the Florida governor said on the 2018 election trail that bathroom expenses were “not a smart use of his time. “
“I signed a toilet bill in Florida, so that’s clearly not true,” DeSantis responded. . . . You killed it, I signed it. I defended the girls, you didn’t.
DeSantis also said he had spoken with South Carolina state legislators who told him that there were transgender women going into women’s facilities in the state at the time of the legislation’s proposal. Haley said that claim was false and that “South Carolinians never allowed that to happen.”
She also highlighted her opposition to transgender women competing in women’s sports, a factor she referred to during the election campaign.
“Biological boys shouldn’t be competing in women’s sports and I’m going to do everything I can to prevent that because these are women of our time,” Haley said.
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by Jacob Fischler, Georgia Recorder December 7, 2023
Half of the four Republican presidential candidates in an Alabama debate Wednesday night attacked former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is fighting for the coveted second spot in the nomination race.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy teamed up early in the debate to continually attack Haley on issues like physical care for transgender people, the war efforts of Ukraine and Israel, and her on corporations and wealthy donors.
Haley praised the approach.
“I love all the attention, guys,” he said. Thank you for that. “
The lengthy exchange that explained the first 30 minutes of the debate (and revived the two-hour event hosted through NewsNation) frustrated the fourth candidate on stage, Chris Christie. The former New Jersey governor has long been a critic of former President Donald Trump. the leading candidate on the issue, the cornerstone of his campaign. Trump, as in the 3 previous debates sanctioned by the Republican National Committee, refused to participate.
Christie criticized others at the event at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, all of whom outvoted him, for not lashing out at Trump. In his opening remarks of the night, he lamented that Haley, DeSantis and Ramaswamy were too focused on others and didn’t even mention Trump.
“For us to go 17 minutes without discussing the guy who has all those gaudy (polling) numbers you talked about is ridiculous,” Christie told the moderators, who’d cited Trump’s large lead in the polls.
“The thing is, he has compatibility to be president,” he added.
Trump has about 60% of Republican voters, according to the FiveThirtyEight average.
Instead, Trump made the impression Tuesday at a Fox News town hall meeting. Host Sean Hannity called on Trump, who played a central role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U. S. Capitol, to allay fears that he would not deliver for Democrats. rules in his second term.
Trump responded that he wouldn’t be a dictator, “except on day one,” when he hinted that he would exercise excessive powers all the way to the border and expand fossil fuel development.
“We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling,” he said. “After that, I’m not a dictator.”
Haley was attacked by DeSantis and Ramaswamy in her opening remarks of the debate, who accused her of being in the pocket of Wall Street and criticized her positions on foreign policy.
Although Trump is far ahead of the rest, the race for second place has been tightening for months as Haley’s effects on the polls have largely advanced at the expense of DeSantis. Although DeSantis still leads Haley in top national polls, the two were tied at 16% in a recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll.
Haley has outperformed DeSantis in recent polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina and has earned a high profile from Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-affiliated PAC.
Ramaswamy also criticized the endorsement of Haley by Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the U. S. -based multinational investment control firm, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, whom he called “George Soros Jr. ,” as his previous board post. leave the United Nations.
The businesswoman said a “system” candidate like Haley would change her policy stances to align with big business campaigning.
Haley has denied the allegation, saying she is being criticized for her charges, not because she replaced them. The former U. N. ambassador noted her decision to leave Boeing after the company called for a “corporate rescue plan” in the wake of the COVID pandemic. -19, a resolution with which he did not agree.
“There’s nothing to what he’s saying,” Haley responded. “And in terms of these donors that are supporting me, they’re just jealous.”
DeSantis also criticized Haley’s dealings with multinational corporations, saying he would make corporations like BlackRock that need to use “economic force to impose a left-wing calendar on this country. “
He pointed to a Florida law he signed that prohibits environmental, social and governance, or ESG, investing, when a company considers non-financial environmental, social and governance issues when making investments, for state public investments.
“The next president of the United States wants to get to this workplace from day one and finish ESG,” DeSantis said. “And the fact is, we know from her history that Nikki will give in to those big donors when needed. “”.
Both applicants also criticized Haley for saying she would require verification of the nominative identity of other people posting on social media.
Haley said on Fox News in November that she would require social media corporations to share their algorithms with the US government, and would require call verification to address “national security” considerations with Russian, Iranian and Chinese bots.
The former South Carolina governor defended her comments on the debate stage, saying that her position was focused on getting rid of foreign influences on social media, not on restricting American rights.
“As a mom, do I think social media would be more civilized if we went there and had people’s names next to us?”Haley said, “yes, I think so, because I think we have too much cyberbullying. I think we have child pornography and all that stuff. But having said that, I never said that the government asks for anybody’s name.
DeSantis and Ramaswamy continually addressed Haley’s complaint in the debate. Ramaswamy, who has been feuding with the former ambassador since the first debate in August, held up a piece of paper that read “NIKKI = CORRUPT. “
He also compared her to Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman who is a social media personality, and said Haley was doing “identity politics” to advance her campaign.
Haley declined to respond to her critics later in the debate, saying, “It’s worth my time. »
Christie is the only candidate who did not attack Haley on the debate stage, but still protected her from Ramaswamy’s attacks.
“Nikki and I disagree on some issues,” Christie said. “But I’ll tell you one thing: I’ve known her for 12 years (which is longer than she started voting as the number one Republican nominee) and while we don’t agree on some issues, and we don’t agree on who will be the president of the Republican Congress, what we do agree on, is that she’s an intelligent and well-rounded woman and that you avoid insulting her.
While defending Haley, the former New Jersey governor lashed out at DeSantis for not directly answering questions posed by debate moderators, as if Trump had mental compatibility with the president because he would be older than President Joe in his second term. Biden was in 2021.
“Is it compatible or not?” I’ll admit it: you’re in good shape, Ron, you’re a new generation. . . That’s my challenge with my 3 colleagues, they’re afraid to offend. “
Christie also kept up a relentless focus on Trump, saying that the former president’s comment about being a dictator was not a joke.
“It’s completely predictable,” he said. “He’s made it very clear if there’s no mystery to what he wants to do.”
“This is an angry, bitter man who now wants to be back as president because he wants to exact retribution on anyone who has disagreed with him, anyone who has tried to hold him to account for his own conduct, and every one of these policies that he’s talking about are about pursuing a plan of retribution,” he added.
Christie predicted that Trump would be unable to vote for himself because he’d be convicted of federal felonies before Election Day.
Trump faces federal charges in two and state charges in two others. All criminal charges are expected to go to trial next year.
DeSantis, who was Trump’s best friend as a member of the U. S. House of Representatives and got help from the then-president in his gubernatorial run, and Haley, who was ambassador to the United Nations during Trump’s tenure, snapped some pictures of Trump. , but turned down opportunities to go more difficult for the former president.
When asked if Trump was unworthy of a job because of his age, DeSantis called for a new generation of leaders, but did not answer directly.
“Father Time is undefeated,” DeSantis said. The concept that we’re going to put someone who’s almost 80 years old up there and it’s not going to have any effect?We all know that’s not true.
Christie challenged DeSantis to answer the yes-or-no question.
“The rest of the speech is interesting, but totally inadequate,” he said.
Haley praised Trump’s record on trade, but said his taste for government was unproductive.
“We want to end the chaos,” he said. But you can’t defeat Democratic chaos with Republican chaos, and that’s what Donald Trump is proposing. My technique is different: no drama, no vfinishetta, no whining. “
Foreign policy remained a point of contention between Haley and Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy, who has expressed isolationist perspectives in previous debates, renewed his proposal to seek a peace agreement between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, criticizing Haley for not knowing the names of the Ukrainian provinces he sought to protect.
“Delight in foreign policy is not the same as wisdom in foreign policy,” he said.
Christie reached out to Haley and criticized Ramaswamy’s pugilistic debating style.
“This is the fourth debate in which in the first 20 minutes the most detestable braggart in America will be elected,” he said.
Ramaswamy also said that, as president, he would tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U. S. “supports” Israel in defeating the Hamas terror group, but that he would be worried about the war.
“As your next president, my sole moral duty is to you, the people of this country,” he said.
DeSantis responded that U. S. citizens were among those who suffered from Hamas’ wonderful attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Haley also advocated for a greater role in global conflicts, saying the U. S. deserves Ukraine, Israel and, potentially, Taiwan to oppose an alliance between Russia, Iran and China.
“There’s an explanation for why the Ukrainians need the Israelis,” Haley said. “Because they know that if Iran wins, Russia wins. “
The issue of allowing minors to transition, either socially or medically, was also a hot topic on the debate stage.
Both DeSantis and Ramaswamy have called for a ban on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth, even with parental permission. The minors will not be allowed to undergo procedures such as mastectomies, hormone replacement treatments and, in rare cases, genital surgeries, the two applicants said. DeSantis called the medical interventions “mutilation. “
The moderators called on Christie to protect his position on procedures for transgender youth and allow students to socially transition (a name or pronoun different from the one they were given at birth) at school without parental permission.
Christie denied claims that it did not require notification to parents if a child uses another word or pronoun at school, but said it would not restrict the right parents from providing possible options to their minor children.
“Every once in a while, parents make decisions that we don’t agree with,” Christie said. “But as soon as you start taking those rights away from parents, you don’t know, on that slippery slope, what rights are going to be taken away from me next. “
DeSantis interrupted Christie by telling her that parents “have no right to abuse their children. “
“It’s mutilating those miners, they’re irreversible procedures,” DeSantis said. Array. I signed a law in Florida that prohibits the mutilation of minors because it’s a mistake. We cannot allow this to happen in this country.
The Florida governor said he believes Christie has an “honest position” on the issue of transgender youth transitioning, but he also criticized Haley for not enacting the so-called “bathroom bill,” which bans the use of gendered amenities such as bathrooms and school locker rooms. other people of the opposite biological sex, regardless of their gender identity or legal sex.
Haley said her stance has focused on the issue of transgender bathroom use since she was governor of South Carolina.
“When the bathroom situation came up, we had maybe a handful of kids that were dealing with an issue, and I said, ‘We don’t need to bring government into this — but boys go into boys bathrooms, girls go into girls bathrooms, and if anyone else has an issue, they use a private bathroom,’” she said. “Now 10 years later, we see that this issue has exploded.”
He also claimed that DeSantis was being hypocritical, claiming that the Florida governor said on the 2018 election trail that bathroom expenses were “not a smart use of his time. “
“I signed a bathroom bill in Florida, so that’s clearly not true,” DeSantis responded. “. . . You killed it, I signed it. I stood up for little girls, you didn’t.
DeSantis also said she spoke with South Carolina state lawmakers, who told her there were transgender women attending the state’s women’s services at the time of the bill. Haley said that claim was false and that “South Carolinians never allowed this to happen. “
She also highlighted her opposition to transgender women competing in women’s sports, a factor she referred to during the election campaign.
“Biological boys shouldn’t be competing in women’s sports and I’m going to do everything I can to prevent that because these are women of our time,” Haley said.
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Jacob covers federal politics as a senior reporter for States Newsroom. Based in Oregon, it focuses on Western issues. Its policy spaces include climate, energy development, public lands, and infrastructure.
Robin Opsahl is an Iowa Capital Dispatch reporter who covers the Legislature and state politics. They delight in covering government, elections, and much more at media organizations, such as Roll Call, Sacramento Bee, and Wausau Daily Herald.
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