DeSantis, Haley headline fight night at Republican debate

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley pointed fingers and compared their respective political records during Wednesday’s fourth Republican debate — while ducking the mudslinging and character attacks from the other two candidates on the debate 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.

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.

“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.”