With just six weeks to go until the first nominating contest of the 2024 Republican presidential primaries — the all-important Iowa caucuses — Wednesday night represented one of the last opportunities White House hopefuls will have to make their case to a national audience.
The four candidates, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, all stepped foot on the stage in Tuscaloosa, Ala., with the same goal: To pitch why they, not the other Republicans on the stage, and certainly not the candidate who wasn’t — former President Donald Trump, the nomination’s far and away frontrunner — should be the person taking on President Joe Biden in 2024.
But did they? That remains to be seen when voters in Iowa and New Hampshire make their voices heard next month.
And is it even possible to catch Trump at this point? After all, Nationally, Trump is polling near 60%, followed by DeSantis just under 13%, Haley around 10%, Ramaswamy at 5% and Christie around 3%, according to polling averages compiled by aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
In Iowa, Trump is logging 46% support, DeSantis is at 20%, Haley at 17.5% and Ramaswamy at 5%. Haley has surpassed DeSantis for second place in New Hampshire and South Carolina, but trails Trump by 25% and 30%, respectively.
As has become tradition amid this primary cycle, Trump did not attend the primary debate, this time around opting to attend a closed-door fundraiser in Florida. His campaign did, however, release a new ad during the debate — though it was one that attacked Biden, not any of his Republican opponents.
After the debate, Trump’s super PAC called for Republicans to start rallying around the former president.
“The battle for second place has become the biggest waste of time, money, and energy that politics has ever seen,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Make America Great Again Inc., adding that the candidates on the debate stage were “putting up a fake fight to satisfy their egos and please their billionaire puppet masters.”
Despite Trump’s absence, his presence did loom large over the proceedings, particularly in the form of criticism from ally-turned-foe Christie, who called him “unfit” to serve in the Oval Office once again.
“He started off his campaign by saying, ‘I am your retribution.’ Eight years ago, he said, ‘I am your voice,’” Christie said. “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 them, anyone who's tried to hold him to account for his own conduct.”
Wednesday was also an insult-laden affair, with the candidates throwing jabs at one another on issues ranging from gender-affirming care to foreign policy. Christie called Ramaswamy the “most obnoxious blowhard in America,” who in turn held up a paper with “Nikki = corrupt” written on it to attack the former South Carolina governor, who in turn fended off a tag team of mudslinging from Ramaswamy and DeSantis.
Here are some takeaways from Wednesday night’s debate:
It’s clear that Haley, the candidate whose profile has been raised the most by the first three debates, had a target on her back Wednesday night. DeSantis and Ramaswamy quickly went after the former ambassador to the United Nations.
DeSantis attacked Haley for criticizing Florida’s law banning gender-affirming care for minors.
“It's child abuse, and it's wrong,” DeSantis said. “She opposes that bill.”
Haley insisted DeSantis was incorrect about her position.
“I never said that,” she said. “I said that if you have to be 18 to get a tattoo, you should have to be 18 to have anything done to change your gender.”
Ramaswamy alleged that Haley was “bankrupt” when she left her ambassadorship and is now a multimillionaire after serving on the board of Boeing and giving multinational speeches.
“That math does not add up,” he said. “It adds up to the fact that you are corrupt.”
Haley denied being bankrupt when she left her ambassadorship.
Both Ramaswamy and DeSantis criticized Haley for saying last month that every social media user should have their name verified.
“The only person more fascist than the Biden regime now is Nikki Haley, who thinks the government should identify every one of those individuals with an ID,” Ramaswamy said. “That is not freedom. That is fascism.”
Haley said she would protect freedom of speech for Americans, but wants social media companies to be transparent about their algorithms and root out bots from foreign adversaries.
The former South Carolina governor has indeed softened her position since receiving blowback from Republicans. In her initial comments, she told Fox News: “When I get into office, the first thing we have to do, social media accounts, social media companies, they have to show America their algorithms. Let us see why they’re pushing what they’re pushing. The second thing is every person on social media should be verified by their name.”
DeSantis also said Haley would “cave” to major donors who now support her campaign.
Haley had a couple of one-liners about the barrage of attacks, saying, “In terms of these donors that are supporting me, they're just jealous” and, “I love all the attention, fellas. Thank you for that.”
At one point in Wednesday's debate, Christie jumped in to defend Haley a barrage of Ramaswamy attacks.
"Foreign policy experience is not the same as foreign policy wisdom," Ramaswamy said. "One thing that Joe Biden and Nikki Haley is that neither of them could even state for you three provinces in Ukraine that they want to send our troops to fight for."
"We are now 25 minutes into this debate and he’s insulted her basic intelligence,” Christie said of the Ohio native and businessman. “This is a smart, accomplished woman. You should stop insulting her.”
He also called Ramaswamy the "most obnoxious blowhard in America" at one point.
"You do this at every debate," the former New Jersey governor said. "You go out on the stump and you say something, all of us see it on video, we confront you on the debate stage, you say you didn't say it and then you back away."
"This is the fourth debate that you would be voted in the first 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blowhard in America, so shut up for a while," Christie added.
Ramaswamy, undeterred, held up a paper with “Nikki = corrupt” written on it at one point in the debate.
“Nicki is corrupt. This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house,” Ramaswamy said.
He then brought up that Haley said at the first debate that only a woman can get the job as president done. Ramaswamy continued, saying that after he criticized RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel in the third debate and threw jabs at Haley, the former South Carolina governor said he has “a woman problem.”
“Nikki, I don't have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem,” Ramaswamy said.
Asked if she would like to respond to Ramaswamy’s comments, Haley replied “No, it's not worth my time to respond to him.”
The debate kicked off with roughly 17 minutes of a three-way row between Haley, Ramaswamy and DeSantis. Afterwards, it was finally time for the fourth candidate on the stage to get a turn to speak: the former governor of the Garden State.
But Christie made up for the lost time by coming out out swinging against his fellow Republicans on the stage — and the one candidate who was not, former President Donald Trump.
When asked about his previous support for the former president, Christie slammed the candidates to his left — “these three acting as if the race is between the four of us” — before turning his attention to “the fifth guy who doesn't have the guts to show up and stands here.”
“He’s way ahead in the polls,” Christie said of Trump, before making reference to a certain series of best-selling fantasy novels: "And yet, I've got these three guys who are all seemingly to compete with … Voldemort, he who shall not be named.”
Christie slammed Trump as “a dictator” and “a bully” and “unfit to be president,” slamming him for saying “this past week that he wants to use the Department of Justice to go after his enemies when he gets in there.”
“They don't want to talk about it,” Christie said. “For us to go 17 minutes without discussing the guy ... is ridiculous. I'm in this race because the truth needs to be spoken. He is unfit.”
“There is no bigger issue in this race than Donald Trump,” he added.
Christie was asked about Trump’s comments during a Fox News town hall on Tuesday night, when Trump said he would not be a dictator upon returning to the White House “except for Day One.”
“He started off his campaign by saying, ‘I am your retribution.’ Eight years ago, he said, ‘I am your voice,’” Christie said. “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 them, anyone who's tried to hold him to account for his own conduct.”
Christie then blasted the other three candidates on the stage for saying during the first debate in August that they would support Trump, who is skipping the debate, even if he was convicted of federal felonies.
“By the way, federal felonies which involve our election process,” Christie said. Federal felonies which involve the most sensitive of our governmental secrets. Federal felonies where he instructed others to commit crimes.
“You want to know why those [Trump’s] poll numbers are where they are, because folks like these three guys on the stage make it seem like his conduct is acceptable. Let me make it clear: His conduct is unacceptable. He’s unfit.”
Christie also said of Trump: “Do I think he was kidding when he said he was a dictator? All you have to do is look at the history.”
Christie’s comments were met by a mix of applause and boos.
DeSantis, who has previously said that Trump has “lost the zip on his fastball,” was asked if the 77-year-old former president was fit to be president again.
DeSantis did not directly answer the question, only reiterating earlier comments he made that president is not a job for someone who is 80, which Trump would be during another term, and that it’s time for a new generation of leaders.
"Father time is undefeated," DeSantis said, adding: "The idea that we are going to put someone up there that's almost 80 and there's going to be no effects from that — we all know that that's not true."
Christie confronted DeSantis for not answering the question and pressed him for one, only to have DeSantis repeat himself.
“He’s afraid to answer,” Christie said.
“No, I’m not,” DeSantis responded.
DeSantis said that, under his administration, drug cartels “better buckle up,” insisting that he would seek to classify Mexican drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations,” likening the border to his military service in Iraq.
“When I was in Iraq, al-Qaida wasn’t wearing a uniform — you’d see anyone walkding down tne street, they all had man-dresses on,” DeSantis said. “You didn't know if someone had a bomb or an [improvised explosive device] attached or not. You had to make a judgment based on intelligence, based on positive identification,” he said, referring to the act of shooting a suspected terrorist.
The crux of DeSantis’ issue with the border is the fentanyl crisis, which he asserts is driven by smuggling from migrants across the southern border.
“Here's the thing, if we had a wall across the southern border — which I support — this would not have happened,” DeSantis said.
According to the CDC, the rise in synthetic opioid deaths began in 2013, and surpassed commonly prescribed opioids and heroin by 2016; from 2015 to 2020, the rate of opioid-involved overdose deaths doubled from 10.4 to 21.4 per 100,000.
“I’ll get [a border wall] done,” and he’ll tax money sent by foreign workers to their home countries to do it, DeSantis said.
When asked about a statement that she would not deport those working and paying taxes, Haley stood by her words — and clarified that the “7 or 8 million illegals that have come under Biden’s watch absolutely have to go back.”
“We have to stop the incentive of what’s bringing them over here in the first place,” she said, pointing the finger at temporary protected status given to Venezuelans, rather than employers. (According to data from the Department of Labor, the foreign-born workforce accounted for 18.1% of the labor force in the U.S. as of 2022.)
On fentanyl though, her focus wasn’t on drug cartels as much as the source of raw materials: China.
“That’s why we need to end all normal trade relations with China, until they stop murdering Americans with fentanyl," Haley said. "Trump was good on trade, but that's all he was with China, because he allowed fentanyl to continue to come over.”
To that end, he joined Haley in wanting to get to the “root cause”: China.
"I will tell [Chinese President] Xi Jinping, you will not only not buy land in this country, or donate to universities in this country, U.S. businesses won't expand into the Chinese market until they're playing by the same set of rules,” Ramaswamy said, before blaming China for the COVID pandemic as much as the fentanyl crisis. “We have to hold them accountable with every financial lever that we have available — that is what it actually means to stand with a spine.”
Multiple candidates criticized the Biden administration for not doing enough to hold Iran – which has long backed Hamas – accountable when asked about the Israel-Hamas war.
When asked how far he would go to get Americans being held hostages by Hamas out of Gaza, DeSantis took a jab at President Joe Biden, claiming he has sought “to kneecap” Israel “every step of the way” amid its offensive in Gaza. DeSantis then noted U.S. troops are facing attacks from Iranian-backed groups in Syria and Iraq, adding Biden is “responding with basically pinpricks.”
“Biden is doing nothing to bring Iran to account. We gotta turn the screws on them. Don't let them have any oil revenue,” DeSantis said, adding the money Iran gets is sent to U.S.-designated terrorist groups throughout the Middle East.
Christie interrupted, saying DeSantis did not answer the question about sending U.S. troops into the Middle East to get hostages out.
“Absolutely. If they had a plan, which showed me that we could get them out safely. You're damn right,” Christie said when the question was then turned to him. “I'd send the American army in there to get our people home and get them home now. And I'll answer that question directly.”
Ramaswamy said what happened to Israel on Oct. 7 – the day Hamas attacked and killed about 1,200 Israelis – was “dead evil.”
However he went on to take aim at the idea that it was an attack on America – a point Haley previously made. Dozens of Americans were killed as a result in the attack and U.S. citizens were taken hostage.
“But to say that that was an attack on America fails a basic test,” Ramaswamy said. “Nikki, if you can't tell the difference between where Israel is and the U.S. is on a map, I can have my three year old son show you the difference.”
“I'll tell Bibi, you smoke the terrorists on your southern border, you go ahead and we're rooting for you,” Ramswamy continued, referencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We're going to smoke the terrorists on our own southern border.”
Haley went on to make the point that Iran only responds to strength, criticizing the Biden administration for a deal this summer in which the U.S. agreed to move $6 billion in Iranian funds from banks in South Korea to Qatar, where Iran would be able request withdrawals for humanitarian purposes. The agreement led to the release of five Americans detained in Iran. She also came down on the president for the attacks on U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq.
“You've got to punch them, you've got to punch them hard and let them know that, that's the only way they're going to respond,” Haley said. “So the way you do that is you go after their infrastructure in Syria and Iraq where they're hitting our soldiers. That's what you do, and then that's when they'll back off.”
Ramaswamy, who has staked out a far-right position in an increasingly right-wing presidential primary, spouted conspiracy theories about 9/11, the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and immigration.
The latter dubious claim, known as the Great Replacement Theory, blames shadowy elites and Democrats for bringing in nonwhite immigrants into the country to replace white Americans. It is broadly considered to be antisemitic due to adherents often defining elites as Jews. Multiple neo-Nazi and white nationalist mass shooters have cited it as inspirations for their deadly attacks.
“If you want someone to speak truth to power, then vote for somebody who is going to speak truth to you,” Ramaswamy claimed. “Why am I the only person on this stage at least who can say that Jan. 6 now does look like it was an inside job, that the government lied to us for 20 years about Saudi Arabia’s involvement in 9/11, that the Great Replacement Theory is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.”
Ramaswamy also falsely claimed that “Big Tech” stole the 2020 presidential election from former President Trump and that U.S. intelligence agencies attempted to steal it from him in 2016, when Trump won.
A gunman in New Zealand who killed 51 worshippers at two mosques in 2019 titled his manifesto after Great Replacement Theory. A white nationalist who killed 21 people at Walmart in El Paso, Texas in 2019 believed in the bigoted conspiracy. In August, a white supremacist who massacred 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 was sentenced to death. He believed Jews were working towards the genocide of white people.
As for the 2020 election, dozens of election officials and judges of both parties from across the country have consistently denounced claims of fraud and have said there is no evidence of a widespread scheme to rig the election against Trump, as the former president and Ramaswamy continue to insist. Trump is currently facing criminal trials in Georgia and Washington, D.C., connected to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result.
And the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot was not an “inside job,” as Ramaswamy claimed. Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol that day after being encouraged to march there by their movement’s leader. The rioting was one of the most widely viewed and documented events in 21st century American history.
As of Wednesday, over 1,200 people have been charged with offenses connected to that day, including 120 with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious injury to an officer. Over 700 defendants have pleaded guilty and another 138 were found guilty at trial. Some militia and street gang leaders involved in the violence have been charged with seditious conspiracy.
Greeted by daunting economic realities and an affordability crisis, the candidates argued the best prescription for inflation, housing prices and education costs is a drastically smaller government.
Haley said she wouldn’t sign any spending bills that funded the government at higher levels than before the COVID-19 pandemic and argued that regulation, not the free market, was to blame for high mortgage rates that keep younger Americans from buying homes. Instead of getting involved with the housing market, the federal government she focus on reducing the national debt, she argued.
“What you have is a lot of younger people who, one, can't afford a home but, two, the banks aren't lending them any money. They've made the regulation so hard that they don't want to give loans on mortgages anymore. So what we have to do is we have to open it up, we have to grow our economy so that people have more money in their pockets,” Haley said.
Meanwhile DeSantis said he would pump up domestic oil and gas production to lower energy costs for Americans and require universities and colleges to guarantee student loans “because they need to have an incentive to produce gainful employment for people.”
“They should not be indulging in ideological studies. They should be focusing on things that work and we're going to take some of this money and we're going to move it to actual vocational training,” DeSantis said.
And Ramaswamy defended his affinity for cryptocurrency and lack of interest in regulating it, while advocating for his plan to gut the government of millions of employees.