Four Republican candidates faced off Wednesday in a fiery GOP presidential debate in Tuscaloosa, Ala., hosted by The Hill’s sister news organization NewsNation.
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley took on fire from her fellow GOP contenders as she vies with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for second place behind former President Trump, who skipped the debate. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy also took the stage in the smallest showdown yet.
With six weeks before the nominating process begins in Iowa, candidates clashed over questions around the front-runner, Trump.
Elizabeth Vargas, Megyn Kelly and Eliana Johnson moderated the debate, which ended at 10 p.m. ET.
Here’s a recap of the night.
The super PAC supporting former President Trump slammed his Republican presidential rivals after the party’s fourth debate, with Trump absent from the stage.
“The battle for second place has become the biggest waste of time, money, and energy that politics has ever seen,” said Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for Make America Great Again Inc., in a statement.
Leavitt argued the candidates participating in the Tuscaloosa event are “putting up a fake fight to satisfy their egos and please their billionaire puppet masters” — and called for the party to “unify” around Trump, the frontrunner of the field.
Trump has skipped the four debates so far and called for the Republican National Committee (RNC) to cancel the events. With Trump leading by double digits as the party approaches the start of voting in January, some have looked at the debates as emblematic of a race for second place.
—Julia Mueller
Nikki Haley called for the U.S. to ban TikTok “once and for all,” alleging that the app is fueling antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack against Israel.
The app has faced calls from Jewish content creators and celebrities since Oct. 7 to take more effective action against antisemitic content on the platform.
— Julia Shapero
Nikki Haley declared in her closing statement that she would be a “no-drama” president if elected to the Oval Office in 2024.
She painted the country as one “in chaos” and argued former President Trump, the party’s front-runner, would give the party more discord.
“My approach is different: no drama, no vendettas, no whining,” Haley said.
— Julia Mueller
In his closing statement of the night, Chris Christie predicted former President Trump won’t be able to cast a ballot in 2024 because of the legal battles he faces.
“Picture in your minds Election Day. You’ll all be heading to the polls to vote. And that’s something Donald Trump will not be able to do,” Christie said. “Because he will be convicted of felonies before then, and his right to vote will be taken away.”
Trump is the front-runner of the GOP presidential primary field, but he faces a number of legal battles in courtrooms across the country, including multiple criminal indictments.
Christie’s remark prompted boos from the Tuscaloosa audience.
“You can boo about it all you like and continue to deny reality. But if we deny reality as a party, we’re going to have four more years of Joe Biden,” Christie said.
— Julia Mueller
Chris Christie fired back at Nikki Haley for claiming former President Trump had good trade policy on China, saying, “All he did was impose tariffs, which raised the prices for every American.”
“I’ll say this about what I heard from Nikki earlier. She said that Donald Trump was good on trade. He wasn’t, and the proof that he wasn’t good on trade with China is that all he did was impose tariffs, which raised the prices for every American,” he said.
He further claimed Trump’s trade policy contributed to high inflation.
“You want to know what has contributed to inflation in this country? Yes, it’s more government spending. Yes, it’s the fact that we’re printing too much money. Absolutely. But it is also the increase in prices that were driven by Donald Trump’s tariffs. And one last thing. You can’t say he was good on trade because he didn’t change one Chinese policy in the process. He failed on it.”
— Sarah Fortinsky
Former President Trump released an ad bashing President Biden as his fellow Republican presidential candidates sparred on the Tuscaloosa debate stage.
“Weak leaders talk about the possibility of war. Because they’re weak and insecure,” says the narrator of the 25-second clip shared by Team Trump on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “It’s time for a strong American.”
The video plays a clip of Biden saying “American troops fighting Russian troops” — and argues for a Trump presidency to ensure that possibility “never happens.”
The clip of Biden appears taken from Wednesday remarks in which Biden urged Congress to pass his national security supplemental request, which includes funding to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.
“If Putin attacks a NATO Ally … well, we’ve committed as a NATO member that we’d defend every inch of NATO territory. Then we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops,” Biden said.
— Julia Mueller
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis avoided a question on whether he would send American troops to Taiwan to defend the island nation in the event of a Chinese invasion.
“It’s going to work,” DeSantis said when the moderator asked if he would send troops if deterrence failed.
“Taiwan’s an ally, we have [a] long-standing American policy, and you know how that’s done, and we will follow that.”
— Brad Dress
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley declined to tangle with biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy after the 38-year-old GOP millennial repeatedly criticized the South Carolina Republican.
“Nikki Haley’s campaign launch video sounded like a woke Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light ad talking about how she would kick in heels,” adding later, “you have a corruption problem.”
Haley was asked whether she wanted to respond to Ramaswamy’s attacks.
“No, it’s not worth my time to respond to him,” she replied.
Chris Christie defended his opposition to state laws that ban gender-affirming health care for transgender minors, saying he believes parents should be able to make medical decisions on behalf of their children.
“Republicans believe in less government, not more,” he said. “I trust parents.”
— Brooke Migdon
Ramaswamy held up a pad of paper with “NIKKI = CORRUPT” written on it.
The move elicited boos from the crowd as Ramaswamy accused Haley of ascribing to “identity politics” and a lack of authenticity.
Chris Christie and Ron DeSantis got into a heated back-and-forth about former President Trump.
“There’s no mystery to what he wants to do. He started off his campaign by saying, ‘I am your retribution.’ Eight years ago he said, ‘I am your voice,’” Christie said of Trump.
“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’s 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,” Christie contended.
DeSantis was then asked whether he thinks Trump is fit to be president for another term. “Father time is undefeated,” the Florida governor said, referencing Trump’s age.
Christie pressed him on the response. “Why doesn’t he just answer the question? … Is he fit to be president or isn’t he?”
— Julia Mueller
Moderators of the fourth debate started off the second hour by asking the four candidates about some of former President Trump’s remarks.
The moderators noted they had offered an invitation for him to join the debate, which they noted he declined. They proceeded to ask the candidates to respond to a clip of his remarks in October in Iowa on Muslim immigrants coming to the U.S.
-Caroline Vakil
Nikki Haley criticized the high barriers to homeownership in the U.S., blaming the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes over the last year and a half, among other factors.
“Right now the average homeowner in America is 49 years old,” Haley said. “You’ve got young people everywhere. That used to be the American dream, and now it’s out of reach.”
“Look at what the Fed did,” she added. “The Fed did a terrible job when they allowed all of that money to go through. You saw the treasury bond rates go up that affected mortgage rates that affected automobile rates that affected insurance rates. And so now we have a high interest rate.”
— Julia Shapero
Ron DeSantis went after congressional leaders for failing to slow inflation and the increasingly expensive housing market.
“That’s just a fact, these Republicans in Washington have spent [so much], it’s driven your prices higher, and it’s driven your interest rates to the point where you can’t afford [a home],” DeSantis said.
The governor relayed meeting a voter in Iowa who described an unaffordable housing market and the struggle to make ends meet. DeSantis said the leadership of President Biden and congressional Republicans has “taken the American dream away from him.”
“So we’re gonna get the inflation down,” DeSantis promised. “We’re gonna get the interest rates down. We’ll reduce spending, and I believe we’re going to have to veto, and I vetoed a lot as governor of Florida and we’ll do that.”
The GOP has emphasized the economy in its political messaging, though the Biden administration has avoided a recession, which many economic analysts called inevitable. Inflation has fallen drastically in recent months and unemployment remains low.
— Nick Robertson
Ron DeSantis called for student loans to be backed by universities, which he said would incentivize schools to equip their students for gainful employment.
“Another thing that’s burdening young people are these student loans. Now I don’t support having a truck driver having to pay a student loan for someone that got a degree in gender studies. That is wrong. We should not have taxpayers do that,” he said.
“What I’m gonna do, though, is I’m gonna get to the root cause of the problem.”
“These student loans are going to be backed by the universities 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 gonna move it to actual vocational training,” he said.
— Sarah Fortinsky