>> in alabama, it's about tradition. family, faith, and college football. but on this night, the film showdown of the year moves to a new stage on america's newest cable news network. 40 days before the iowa cau caucuses, millions of votes are still up for grabs. and four candidates are fighting for every last one of them. who could catch fire and shock the political world? >> 2024 is do for die for us, we're not getting a mulligan on this. >> governor ron desantis. >> we have to have a new generational leader. >> former ambassador, nikolai ambassador nikki hahaley.

>> you're pro america or not. >> vivek ramaswamy. >> we discover better character in the white house. >> former governor, chris christie. live on newsnation for news in all america. the lights are on, the field is set, it's game day in alabama and who knows what the tide will roll in. [ applause ] >> welcome to the 4th and film republican presidential primary debate of the year, live from the university of alabama. i'm megyn kelly, host of the megyn kelly show podcast on siriusxm. >> i'm eliana johnson, with the washington free beacon. >> and i'm elizabeth vargas with newsnation and we're live on newsnation and the cw. it's make or break time for the

candidates on this stage right now. with the primaries sta startingt weeks away. let's begin with tonight's rules, candidates will have 90 seconds to answer questions. 60 seconds to give a rebuttal at the moderator's discretion. you will all see the timing lights that indicate when time is up and it's time to stop talking. >> and the time we have is critical over the next two ho hours, so we ask the audience to please keep your applause to a minimum. >> with that, let's get started. on stage four candidates, all vying to be their party's nominee and given the st state f our political system right now one of you might do it. many admit that president biden is a weak candidate, just as many republicans acknowledge that former president donald trump's legal troubles could

impair his second term. oneve you could wind up the l leader of the free world. having said that, mr. trump is 50 points ahead of all of you in the polls and 29 points in iowa caucus, and as republicans get ready to vote where any of you might be preferable to mr. trump, we begin with the question of electability. governor desantis. your campaign and super pact have spent the most money, had the most high net donors and the most money coming into the race after your big election win in florida. you were seen by most to consolidate the non-trump field and here we are a month out from the first real votes and you haven't managed to do it. in fact, nikki haley is beating you in new hampshire and south carolina now and closing in on you in iowa, not to egg mention trump, who is not only dominating in the early states but beating you in florida by

over 30 points. is it fair to say as tim scott did when he dropped out, voters are telling you not no, but not now. >> so we have a great idea in america that the voters actually make these decisions, not pundits or pollsters, and i'm sick of hearing about the polls because i remember those polls in november of 2022. they said there was going to be a big red wave and it was going to be monumental and that crashed and burned. the one place it didn't crash and burn was in the state of florida. they were not predicting the way i did, and i won the greatest republican victory in the state of florida. i'm looking forward to iowa and new hampshire. the voters are going to be able to speak and we're going to earn this nomination and here's what we need. i'm sick of republicans who are not willing to stand up and fight back against what the left is doing to this country. you've got to be willing to stand strong and you have to be willing to beat these people. i'm the only one running for

president that has beaten these people on issue after issue. we beat the teacher's unions when we did school church, we beat fauci on covid, we beat george soros, we beat the democrats on election integrity and i have delivered results and that's what we need for this country. you have other candidates up there like nikki haley, she caves any time the left comes after her, any time the media comes after her. i did a bill? florida to stop the gender mutilation of minors, and its child abuse and wrong. she opposes that bill and thinks it's fine and the law shouldn't get involved with it. if you're not willing to stand up for the kids, to say its wrong to mute late these kids, you're not going to fight for the people back home. i will fight for you and i will win fur. for you. >> ambassador haley. >> u.s. government service in

2018 with $100,000 in the bank and five years later, you're reportedly worth $8 million thanks to lucrative speeches and board members like you had with boeing, you met with heavyweights from jpmorgan and goldman sachs and black rock. several other investors are reportedly ready to endorse you, which come with expectations. aren't you too tight with banks and billionaires to win over the working class base, which wants to break the system and not beholden someone to it. >> it's great to be here, and just to respond to ron, he continues to lie about my record. i actually said his don't say gay bill didn't go far enough because it only talked about gender until the 3rd grade and parents, it should be it talked about with schools, and reference to donors coming onboard, we will take support from anybody i can take support

from, but i've been a conserve fighter all my life. i was a tea party member which was governor. we passed tort reform and one of the toughest illegal immigration laws in the country. we passed pro-life bills, and moved unemployment from 11% to 3%, we took on the unions and took on obama when it took on the syrian refugees and everything in between. to i've had a fight. but when it comes to corporate people who want to support us, we'll take it. i don't ask them what their policies are, they ask what mine are. i tell them what it is, sometimes they agree with them. some don't like how tough i am on china, some don't like how tough i am on bills and that i oppose cooperate bailouts, that's why i'm t the most conservative grassroots in the country, americans for

prosperity, endorsed me last week. >> you didn't respond to the criticism. it was not about the parent's rights and education bill. it was about prohibiting sex change operations on minors. they do puberty blockers and these are irreversible and talk to chloe coal. she went through this, and she may never be able to have kids. that's what nikki haley opposed. she said that the law shouldn't get involved in that, and i ask you if you're somebody that's going to be president of the united states and you can't stand up against child abuse, how are you going to be able to stand up for anything. >> i never said that. >> that's the truth. we have it on video. >> i said if you have to be 18 to get a ta to, you should have to be 18 to have anything done to change your gender. >> you said that the law should stay out of it. >> we're going to get into this more later. but we're going to get to electable. mr. ramaswamy, for months, you campaigned as a unifier and then

stood up at the first debate and attacked all of your competitors as bought and paid for, and the second debate you changed your tune, saying these are good people on this stage, admitting that you could come across as a know it all and rect the practice of insults. by debate three, you called nikki haley corrupt and accused ron desantis of wearing high heels, and said that she should keep an eye on her daughter. are you not in fact a unifier and question our authenticity? >> megan, there's a time in place for everything, and i did say that there are good people on the stage in the third de debate. doug burgum was on the stage and ron desantis is a good person too. and i want to go back to nikki haley's comment from earlier, that she's somehow not responding to the will of these donors. nicki, you were bankrupt when you left the u.n., and after you left the u.n., you became a

military contractor and started service on boeing who is back you scratched for a very long time and gave four national speeches like hillary clinton is, and now you're a multimillionaire. the math doesn't add up, it adds up to you are corrupt. and when i said they are bought and paid for, i mean the republican establishment, not the democratic establishment. and now you have reed hoffman, effectively george soros junior, funding lawsuits across the country to deep donald trump off of the ballots. and he's one of nikki haley's largest supporters. the woke movement, the ceo of black rock, the most powerful company in the world now supporting nikki haley and to say it doesn't affect her is false when she says every american needs to be doxed by having their government issued i.d. tied to what they say on

the internet. so i this is far more corrupt than i even imagined when i entered politics but i will say this. it's going to take a leader from the outside with fresh legs from the next generation to unite this country. not the politicians who are puppets of the puppet masters, but the actual people in this country. thomas jefferson was 33 when he wrote the declaration of independence. i think it's going to take somebody whose best days in life are still ahead to see a country whose best days are ahead of itself. and i think that i can reach that next generation better than anybody else in this race. >> thank you, your response. >> megyn kelly, first of all, we were not bankrupt when i left the u.n., we're people of service, my husband was in the military and i served as ambassador and governor. it may be bankrupt to him but not to us. secondly, ty did serve on th the board with best thing, and i

good a lot of work with them when i was governor and i served for 10 months and when they decided after covid that they wanted to go for a corporate balele bailout, i respectfully stepped back and got off the board. i love boeing, they build commercial planes and for our air force and i'm proud of them and that's why i left the board. there's nothing to what he's saying, and in terms of the donors supporting me, they're jealous, they wish they were supporting them. but i'm not going to . >> governor desantis. >> she wrote a book talking about esg and these conferences and black rock, the idea that i want to do that in florida, they were managing our pensions and i took $2 billion away from black rock, esg, environment social governance, and nicki is meeting with these people and they want

to impose a left-wing agenda on this country, they want to change society with out having to do it with the constitutional process. we kneecapped it in florida and the next president of the united states needs to be able to go to that office on day one and end esg and we know from facts in history, nicki will cave to the big donors when it counties. >> nikki haley was heaping praise on me when i wrote that book but now i worry, i was worried about the woke industrial complex, and apparently she wrote it as a how to manual like george or well. and that's far more dangerous for people to understand. we're marching toward fascism under biden and jack smith has subpoenaed every last tweet that has been issued from donald trump in 2020. the only person more fascist than the biden regime now is nikki haley, who thinks that the

government should identify every one of those individuals with an id. that's not freedom, that's fascism and she should come nowhere they're the levers of power, let alone the white house. >> how are you, can you speak to the requirement that you said that every anonymous internet user needs to out themselves. fair they're both hitting you on it. >> i would love it. and thank you for all of the attention, fellas, thank you. what i said was that social media companies need it show us their algorithms and i also said there are millions of bots on social media right now. they're foreign, chinese, they're iranian. i will always fight for freedom of speech for americans. we do not need freedom of speech for russians and iranians and hamas. we need them to fight on all of the bots that are happening. as a mom, do i think that social

media would be more civil and we wouldn't have people's names next to that? yes, i do think that, because i think we have too much cyberbullying and child pornography and all of those things, but having said that, i never said that government should require anyone's name. >> she said i want your name. her first day in office, one of the first things i want to do, all of social media, i want your name. >> government id. >> that's what she said. you can roll the tape and that was going to be one of the first things she did in office and she got real serious blow back, and massively show. it wouldish a massive expansion of government. we have an anonymous speech, the federalist papers, hamilton, and jefferson, especially how conservatives have been attacked and they have lost jobs and been canceled. you know the regime would use that to weaponize that against our own people.

>> 15 seconds, and then former governor of new jersey. >> ron is so hypocritical because he actually went and tried to push a law that would anonymous people from talking to the press and went so far as to say bloggers should have to register with the state if they're going to talk about elected officials, check your newspaper. it was absolutely there. i have never ted -- >> no more. >> under your it constitutional rights. this is more dangerous than the democrats. >> this section is over, governor christie. >> i'm usually not somebody who gets missed but let's go. >> okay, i got you. listen, you endorsed donald j. trump in 2016 and 2020, you gave him an a for his first term. and since then, you turned on him, calling him a liar, a lo loser, stay conman and someone who can not win and you even said that you got into the race just to stop president donald trump. his approval rating with

republicans is currently at 81% and yours is at 25. your best state is new hampshire and even there, 2/3 of gop voters say that they would be angry and disappointed if you won. respect lie, governor, you have not stopped mr. trump and voters wonder how you can possibly be the nominee of a party that doesn't like you very much. >> look, megan, it's often difficult to be the only person onstage telling the truth and the only person taking what needs to be taken on. we're 17 minutes into this debate and except for this speech in the beginning, we've had these three acting as if the race is between the four of us. the fifth guy, who doesn't have the guts to show up and stand here, he's the one who, as you put it, is way ahead in the polls and yet, i've these three guys all seemingly to compete

with voldmort. he who shall not be named. they don't want to talk about t but when you go and say the truth about somebody who is a dictator, a bully, who has taken shots at everybody, whether they have given great service or not over time, who dares to disagree with them, then i understand why these three are timid to say anything about t maybe it's because they have futureas prayings. maybe those are now or maybe they're 4 years from now, but the fact of the matter, the truth needs to be told. and for us to go 17 minutes with out discussing the guy who has all of those gaudy numbers you talked about is ridiculous. i'm in the race because the truth needs to be spoken. he is unfit. this is a guy who just said this past week that he wants to use the department of justice to go after his enemies when he gets in there. and the fact of the matter is, he's unfit to be president and there's no bigger issue in this race, megyn than donald trump

and those numbers prove it. >> governor christie, we will be addressing the issue of donald trump in just a moment but first i would like to get to questions on israel. governor desantis, as we speak, the war is back on in gaza and israeli tanks have surrounded the home of the leader of hamas, and 8 have not taken hostage in the daniels for 60 days, and american ships are under attack. how far would you go as president to secure the release of those 8 american hostages and would it include sending american forces into combat

we also need to look at what's the underlying problem here. iran. biden is doing nothing to bring them to account. you have to turn the screws on them and don't let them have any oil revenue.

the money they get, they send to hamas and foam et jihad in the middle east. so biden has empowered iran just like other adversaries. we stand with israel, they're our best ally in the middle east and we have a unique relationship with them. and you will see a strong relationship when i'm president of the united states. >> this is the problem with the first three debates. ron gets asked a question and he doesn't answer it. your question was very specific. you said would you send american troops as commander in chief, and he went onto this 1:30 hosanna about his homage to the military and you didn't answer the question. when you are president of the united states, you're not going to have the choice to answer that question or not. your generals, secretary of defense, secretary of state, national security adviser are going to present plans to you and look at you and say do we go or don't you, mr. president, and you can't give a 90 second

speech. >> would you send troops in? >> i would absolutely, if they had a plan that showed me that we could get them out safely, you're damned right i would send the american army in to get our people home and now, and i will answer that question directly thank you, mr. christie. mr. ramaswamy, you said that it was irresponsible for ambassador haley to call hamas' attack on america and for her to "rapidly shout finish them." the hamas attack left dozens of americans dead and was the deadliest attack on jews since the holocaust. why wouldn't it be a good thing to finish hamas? >> finish them was in a discussion that included iran, which is what i objected to, and as u.s. president you have to be responsible. what happened to israel was dead lwrong, what hamas did was

medieval, subhuman, immoral and we have to call that out to october 7th. but to say that it was an attack on america fails the basic test. i could have my three-year-old son show you the difference. that is irresponsible because it has major consequences and doesn't leave room for what actually is an attack on america. so i believe that i have t the most pro israel on the stage than the gop talking points. it is this. the founder of industrial, ben gurrion, we don't want as israel to depend on the fleeting sympathies of the west and have our hands tied. i believe that israel has an absolute ri right defend itselfo the fullest with out the un second guessing its decision decisions i think it's more pro israel than anybody else, and

it's a pro american position, and as the leader of the united states of america, just as the father of two sons, my sole moral dispute is to any family. as your next president, my sole moral duty is to you, the people of this country. i'll tell beebe, you smoke the terrorists on your southern border we'll smoke the terrorists are our southern border and that's how we're going to lead this country. >> but americans were killed in that attack and if you look at this terrorist attacks and americans, this would be one of the top ten in american history, so our own people were killed in that attack and i think it's absolutely appropriate to point that out and say that we're in this together and we're going to work with israel so these people are brought to justice. >> i agree with that. >> ambassador haley, i'm coming to you. iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear state and

gave the green light for hamas' attack on israel. you said in last month's debate that in contract to the biden administration's response do iran, you would punch them once and hard. were you saying that it's time to bomb iran? >> no, i'm not saying that it's time to bomb iran, but i will tell you that i dealt with iran eevery day when i was at the united nations and they only respond to strength. what they don't respond to, when you weakon the response on iran that allowed china to send them billions. and when you don't give $6 billion for five hostages, it only makes them want more hostages and what you don't respond to, when they do strikes on our men and women in iraq and we do nothing but small shots back. you have to punch them and hard and let them know that, and that's the only way that you respond. the way you do that, you go after their infrastructure in syria and iraq where they're hitting our soldiers. that's what you do, and that's

when they'll back off. and the prob is, you have to see that all of these are related. if you look at the fact russia was losing that war with ukr ukraine. putin had hit rock bottom, they had raised the draft age to 65, and he was getting drones from north korea and what happened, when he hit rock bottom, all of a sudden his other friend, iran, hamas goes and invades israel and butchers those people on putin's birthday. there's no one unhappier right now than putin because all of the attention that they had on ukraine we want to israel and that's what they hope is going to happen. we need to make sure that we have full clarity that there's a reason, again, that taiwanese want to help ukrainians. because they know if ukraine wins, china won't invade taiwan. there's a reason that they don't want to invade israelis, because if iran wins, russia wins, but what wins all of that is a strong america, not a weak

america, and that's what joe biden has given us. >> i want to say something about the tide in ukraine. so policy experience is not the same as foreign policy wisdom. i want everyone at home to note that i was the first person that said we need a reasonable peace deal in ukraine and now a lot of the neo cons are quietly coming along to that position with the exception of nikki haley and joe biden who are supporting this war in ukraine. one of the things that they have in common is that neither of them could even state for you three provinces in eastern ukraine that they want to send out our troops to fight for. look at that, this is what i want people to understand. she has no idea what the hell the names of those provinces are, but she wants to send our sons and daughters and military equipment to fight t reject that somebody had a cup of coffee at the u.n. and $1 million after,

and has foreign policy after. she doesn't know the names of the provinces that she wants to fight for. the donors right there. >> let me say something here. you know, his reasonable peace deal in ukraine, he made it clear, give them all of the land that they have already stolen, promise putin that you'll never put ukraine in russia, and then trust putin not to have a relationship with china. let me tell you something. that's not -- >> that's not my deal. >> you do this every debate. don't interrupt me, i didn't interrupt you. you do this every debate. you go out on the stump and say something, all of us see it on video and we confront you on the debate stage, you say you didn't say it, and then you back away. i'm not done yet. now look. >> this is anonymous.

>> the fourth debate. the fourth debate that you would be voted in the first 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blow hard in america so, shut up. [ talking at the same time ] >> i want to say something else. we're now 25 minutes into this debate. and he has insulted nikki ha haley's basic intelligence not her positions, her basic intelligence. she doesn't know regions, she wouldn't be able to finding? on a map that his three-year-old could find. if you want to disagree on issues, and nicki and i disagree on some issues, but i tell you this, i've known her for 12 years, which is longer than he has started to vote in the republican primary, and while we disagree on some issues and disagree about who should be president of the united states, what we don't disagree on, this is a smart accomplished woman

that you should stop insulting. >> first of all, i think that we have just learned something from chris christie. we learned three things right there, first of all chris christie also doesn't want provinces in eastern ukraine he wanted us to fight for, and christie, your version of foreign policy experience was closing a bridge in new york, walk yourself out of the stage and enjoy a nice meal and get the hell out of this, a when it comes to nicki, if you're going to send your sons and daughters to die in someone's else's war. listen up to this, if these people to the send your sons and daughters to guy in ukraine, they have within arguing for a year. $200 billion of our tax money sent over, and neither of them could name the provinces that they want to protect and these are people touting their so-called foreign policy

experience. it's intellectual fraud. these people are lying to you, the same people who told you about weapons of mass destruction in iraq, to justify that invasion, didn't know the first thing about it, but yet sent thousands of our sons and daughters to go die. the same thing in afghanistan where the taliban is still in charge 20 years later. $7 trillion in debt. you can put a lipstick on a dick cheney and it's still a fascist neo con. >> thank you, mr. ramaswamy. 15 seconds. >> name the provinces. >> let me just say this. you know, this is the kind of thing where he talks about experience. you know, i was the u.s. attorney in new jersey when the terrorist attacks were launched

against the united states in 2001. i brought the first two cases in this country against terrorists who tried to attack us again. and i know about the threat of terrorism and bullying there this country and around the world. and at that time, he was learning about the provinces in ukraine, sitting with his smartass mouth at harvard. that's what was going o and the fact of the matter and back then he was a democrat. so the fact is, all he knows how to do. >> you were too busy hugging barack obama. >> all he knows how to do is insult good people who have committed their lives to public service and not saying anything that moves the ball down the field for the united states. >> we're going to take a quick break and cool things down a little bit. and when we come back, we're going to tackle issues on the southern border.

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ish. >> welcome back to the republican primary debate live on newsnation from tuscaloosa, alabama. we're now going to go to the crisis on the southern border. polls show immigration and the crisis are among the most pressing issues for republican voters right now. both the issue of migrants crossing illegally into our country, and the separate issue with fentanyl being smuggled in, mostly through illegal ports of entry. all year, newsnation has been documenting the crisis, in 2023

alone, border patrol encountered a record 2.4 million migrants. all four of you have talked tough. the question now is how realistic is the talk? so governor desantis, i would like to start with you. you have pledged to send the military to the southern border on day one of your administration with orders to shoot stone cold dead anyone illegally entering with a backpack that you believe contains fentanyl. critics have called this a shoot first, and questions later policy that would add to extra-judicial killing. you are a former military lawyer, why do you think that this idea of yours would be legal? >> the drug cartels are invading our countries and killing our citizens by the tens of thousands every year. we had a situation in florida, an 18-month-old baby was crawling on the floor of an air b and b rental and there was

fentanyl on the carpet and the baby decide. is this acceptable there the country? the elites in it did. c don't care that illegals are ravaging our community. the commander in chief not only has a right but you have a responsibility to fight back against these people. >> does that mean shooting first? you're going to categorize them as foreign terrorist organizations and i was in iraq and al qaeda wasn't wearing a uniform. you see them walking down the street and they all had man dresses on, and you didn't know if they had a bomb fach attached or not. and you had to make a judgment based on identification. but we're going to get the intelligence on these cartel people. if we had a wall across the southern border, which i support, this would not have happened. we need to build a wall across the southern border. i'll get it begun, and mexico was supposed to pay for it, if here's how you do that.

i'm going to have fees on remittances for foreign workers when they send money back to mexico, i'm going to attach. and we don't have t. and i'm going to build t. but we have to lean in on this problem. i'm not going to sit there and allow mothers to lose more kids because of fentanyl overdose, and let text trafficking go unabated or human trafficking go unabated. there's going to be a new sheriff in town and these drug cartels better buckle up. >> ambassador haley. >> you have pledged and deport all migrants here in this country illegally, and then you said in londonderry, new hampshire last month, you will not deport those working and paying taxes rather than feeding off the system. which is it? >> first of all what i said, all of the 7 or 8 million illegals that much come under biden's watch absolutely have to go back. we have to stop the insettive of what's bringing them over here

in the first place. biden just gave temporary protective status to 500,000 venezuelans, that's half a million social security cards, half a million drivers' licensees and i know at the time in the united nations, the first thing they do is pick up the phone, we came over and come on over and that's what brings more. we have to deport them. for those here longer than that, we have to start seeing who is it, how long have they been h here? have they been vetted? paying taxes? have they been working if who else is out there. my parents came in legally, they put in the time, the price, and they are offended by those coming illegally. we can't let them skip the line, but when you talk about fent vil like before, let's look at something else. yes, i think we should send special operations over and take out the cartels, we should do a remain in mexico policy so they never stem foot on u.s. soil in

the miles per hour. but look where fentanyl came from, let's go to the heart of the matter, it came from china, and that's why we need to end all trade relationships with china until they stop murdering us with fent milwaukee and this is where trump went wrong. trump was good on trade. but that's he was with china. because here he allowed fentanyl to continue to come over, he continued to allow--he would give them technology to buildup their military and hurt us. he allowed the chinese infiltration to buy up farmland, to put money into our universities and continue to do things that were harmful to america. and we had a spy base in cuba and police stations. >> this is rich. when she was the governor of south carolina, she was the number-one ranked governor of bringing the ccp into her state. she wrote a love letter to the chinese ambassador saying how great a friend china was, you can see it on the website, is ron desantis.com.

and there's a video of her caz governor standing in front of a chinese flag, with a chinese business, saying that she now works for them, talking about this chinese company. and she has been very weak on china. here's the problem. the rhetoric is different. but her donors, these wall street donors are making money in china, and they're not going to let her be tough on china and she will cave to the donors and not stand up for you. [ applause ] >> first of all, he's mad because the wallace donors used to support him and now they support me. the second thing, he has a company, a chinese company, that he just did a rally there last year, and they have given you 340,000 in campaign donations between them and their employees. >> an american company. >> jenko solar is another one. they expanded and gave you $2 million in subsidies. >> i banned china from buying land in the state of florida.

nikki haley brought connish furious to the universities in south carolina, a and i rejected them. i have a record of standing and up doing what is right. >> you have a record of lying. >> she's trying to sigh things like that. the media groups, usually if i say the sky is blue, they looked at her charges and said that it was totally false and they could not find one instance of a chinese business coming to florida because we never rec recruited any chinese businesses coming to florida. >> mr. ramaswamy. >> over the past year, you have used the military to annihilate drug labs inside of mexico, something that the president of aid would be a hostile act. but fentanyl can easily made anywhere, and labs shut down can be easily replaced. are your tough policies offering false hope to a country wracked

by addiction? >> to the contrary, i don't think that it's going to come to that if we deal with the actual demand side problem that we have in the country. the easy part is using the military to secure the border. i will, and i believe that everybody else wants to do the same thing, but the harder part is dealing with the crisis of purpose and meaning, the mental health epidemic raging across this country like wildfire. and there's a reach that after the opioid crisis you see fentanyl and we need to make sure that we do it. it's worse. they're illegally lacing it into pharmaceuticals and it's dangerous. but we're disallowing ourselves, false promises, saying that we were going to center underlying mental ■healthepidemicnick this country by dealing with the demand side of it. but i want to get back to the root cause because a lot of these are coming from window han, china, and drug cartels that they're bumping across the southern border like aern opium

war. it's going to be a u.s. president that has a very different conversation with xi jinping than what joe biden had. i will tell him. the you will not buy land in this country or businesses in this country. not until they play by the same rules, and illegal in next mexico, it's to coincidence that it's the exact same country that unleashed on the world with the covid-19 pandemic. we have to hold them accounaccountablewith everythine available. if you are willing to stand, china will have to fold because they're in in a tougher spot than we are. >> thank you. let's talk about the economy. bam ambassador haley, home ownership is always part of the american dream, but it's increasingly out of reach for younger americans.

this year, mortgage rates re reached 30 year highs, and home rates reached $30,000 in the past decade. is this the free market at work or should the federal government do something to make homes more affordable? >> first of all, you're exactly right. my daughter just got married and i saw how hard it was for her and her husband to buy a home. right now, the average homeowner is 49 years old. and you have young people every everywhere and it used to be the american dream. now it's out of reach. first, what the fed did. they did a terrible job when they allowed all of that money to go through. you saw the treasury bonds go up and it affected mortgage and automobile rates and insurance rates, and now we have a high interest rate. you have a supply issue. and any builder, the supply issues continue to be there and that causes the rate to go up and now you have insurances that go up. so you have a lot of young people who one, can't afford a

home. but two, the banks aren't lend lending them any money, and they have made it so hard that they don't want to give loans on mortgages anymore. we have to one, grow our economy so people have more money in our pockets. we have to look at the supply chain and make sure that we're funneling that so the builders don't have to go overseas to find things, and we need to make sure that we stop paying down the detect, make sure that we stop the borrowing, the spending and i'll veto any spending bill that doesn't take us back to pre covid levels and our kids are not going to forgive us for all of the spending that's happening. and as much as anybody wants to talk about how donald trump had a good economy, $9 trillion in debt, he did in just four years, and we're all paying the price for that, including the mortgage prices. >> we're going to come back to president donald trump, governor desantis, the latest poll found

that inflation tops the worries of american voters. 60% say that they're very concerned and the working class is the hardest-hit. economists say that it was fueled by a glut of federal spending. the biden administration has a added $6 trillion to the national debt so far, but president trump wasn't exactly a penny pincher. his administration added $7.8 trillion. do republicans, including president trump, share the blame for inflation? and what concrete steps would president desantis take to make ends meet? >> the borrowing and spending of money was boat parties in washington d.c. that's a fact. the republicans in be washington have spent and it has driven your prices higher and your interest rates to the point where you can't afford. i met a young fella in iowa and he graduated college a couple of years ago, and he said i'm gainfully employed and i have no chance to buy a home and start a family. we're going to get the inflation

down and the interest rates down, and we're going to reduce spending and i will be willing to veto a lot. and i did a lot as governor of florida and open up the domestic energy production. lower the gas prices and the price of fuel, and that's going to help the economy and jobs, but the other thing burdening young people are student loans. i don't support having a truck driver paying a student loan that got a degree in gender is studies, that's wrong, but i'm going to get to the root cause of the problem. the student loans are going to be backed by the universities, because they need to have an incentive to produce gainful moment for people and they should not be indulging? ideological studies, but focusing on things that work, and we're going to take some of this money and move it to it vocational training. in florida, we doubled the pretty is ships, and we have more truck drivers. don't let anybody tell us you that the only way to be successful is through a

four-year brick and ivy degree. it's one way but not the only way and we're going to fix that problem in the united states of america. >> mr. ramaswamy, you praised crypto currency like bit coin as an opt out from our broken architecture, and you opposed to regulate t the ahead of the largest international crypto change just pleaded guilty to lect his platform launder money for terrorists, including hamas, and you say that it will ensure economic freedom for americans. wouldn't it also ensure economic freedom for fraudsters and criminals and terrorists? fraudsters and criminals and terrorists have been defrauding people for a long time. and we need to catch up. the fact that he was able to do at ftx shows that whatever they have at the current framework isn't working, and i think that its nothing short of embarrassing that in front of

congress, he couldn't say if ethereum counted as a regulated security or not. i think this is just another example of the administrattive state gone too far. here's the dirty little secreter in american politics today. the people who we elect to run the government are not the ones actually running the government. it's the bureaucrats in those three letter agencies that are writing regulation that's congress never gave them the authority to write. and the good news, a u.s. president can absolutely nix that. that takes a u.s. president with a spine. and will so what i've said in my administration, by the end of year one, we'll have a 75 reduction in the number of federal bureaucrats. we will shut down government agencies that should not exist. we will rescind any regulation that fails the test of west virginia versus environmental protection agency, which is the most important supreme court course of our lifetime. and if congress did not delegate that to an agency

it's unconstitutional. these are all seismic changes, big changes that the next president can deliver with asking congress for permission or forgiveness. i want people to understand that distinction, people have said for a long time, i'm going to work with congress to do this or that, and much of what you heard fit the description, and they need congress. the things that i'm promising you, this is what the leader of the executive branch gets to do under article 12 of the constitution, cut down the bureaucracy, and put the federal reserve in its place, as part of the crypto discussion. >> you're out of time. >> 15 seconds, governor des desantis. >> one of the things that biden wants is a central bank crypto currency, they will take away your privacy and absolutely regulate your purchases. he on day one, we take the idea of central bank crypto currency and throw it in the trash can. it will be dead on arrival.

>> we have the whole second hour to get through, and when we come back, a big subject, huge, donald j. trump. i'm sarah escherich. i'm the life enrichment director at independence village. the senior living community in waukee, iowa. everybody here really, really make you feel like family and that they love you. our goal with tiktok was to... ...enrich the lives of our residents. and just to be able to show people what senior living can be like. anything that we do. sarah, make sure we're having fun. it's the biggest bar night of the year.

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>> welcome back, everyone, so you all spend a lot of time criticizing each other on this stage as governor christy po pointed out and less so on the frontrunner on this race, donald trump. we invited him to come but he

declined to come, but we would like to ask you a couple of questions about him now. ambassador haley. former president donald trump promised if he is elected to bring back and expand his program to limit immigration from muslim countries, and here he is in iowa on on oct october 16th. >> the more we allow dangerous lunatics and ha haters and manis to get residency in our country. >> iif you empathize were radicl islamic terrorists, you're disqualified. >> do you support president trump's plan for ideological screening? >> i don't think that you have a straight up muslim ban as much as you have a ban on countries that want to hurt americans. you can ban those people. we need it look at which countries are a threat to us. you look at the southern border, the ones that worry me the most, those who come from iran and

lebanon, those who say death to america. it's not about a religion, but the fact that certain countries are dangerous and are threats to us. the president has one job and that's to keep america safe. and that's what we have to do, to make sure that we have good national security in the pro process. where the terrorist threats are, and how we're going to deal with it, and the biggest threat we have right now is communist china, but you have to look at what iran and russia are doing as well. and we have to pay attention to that, and we have to focus on cyber, on space, and art artifil intelligence, and not just the things that we focused on. >> it's not just terrorism. that's important but look what's happened in europe, you have more antisemitism in germany than any time since hitler, because they imported mass numbers of people. europe is committing suicide with the mass migration and it's

illegal. nikki haley said that there should be no limits on illegal immigration, and corporate ceos should set the policy. >> that's not true. >> we should not be importing people from cultures that are hostile, for example i said from the gaza, you wanted to import 3,000 people from the gaza strip, and we're not taking them because of the anti-semitism and because they reject the american culture and we have to be smart and not let the united states be like europe. >> i to the take a point. there were things that the government can do right now that nobody is talking about amongst the professional politicians in this race. what about all of the illegals already here. here's the answer, there's 287g in the law and that's a preservation that already allows ice agents to dep tiles or allow local law enforcement to enforce

hose ice wars, and it shocks me that nobody in the republican party is talking about it, there are 1 million ice officials in this country. and the against that backdrop, we absolutely have the ability to deport anybody in this country who is here illegally. >> governor christie. >> i did that as governor of south carolina. >> whether he would be a dictator if he had a second term in office, donald j. trump said no, except for day one, promising to seal the southern border and he has pledged to begin the largest operation in american history, saying that migrants are poisoning the blood in our country, he has promised to roundup millions of immigrants in the united states and what do you make of that plan? >> i think it's completely predictable. look, he has made it very clear. there's no mystery to what he wants to do. he started off his campaign

saying i am your retribution. 8 years ago, he said i am your voice. this is an angry bitter man who now. 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 be conduct and every one of these policies he's talking about are pursuing a plan of retribution. and yet at the first debate, my three colleagues on this stage, when asked if he would be convicted of federal felonies, would they still support him, raised their hand and looked into the camera and let everybody know that they would still support him even if convicted of federal felonies, which involve our election process, federal felonies which involve the most sensitive of our government secrets, federal

felonies where he instructed others to commit crimes, folks who are agreeing to go to jail because of what they did in his name. so do i think that he's kidding when he said he was a dictator? all you have to do is look at the history. and failing to speak out against him and making excuses for him and pretending that somehow he's a victim, empowers him. you want to know why those poll numbers are what they are? because folks like these three on the stage make his conduct acceptable. let me make it clear, it's unfit and be careful of what you are going to get if you get another donald trump term. he's letting you know, he will only be his own retribution. he doesn't care for the american people, it's donald trump first. >> thank you, governor christie. governor desantis. >> thank you, donald trump would be older on day one of his second presidency than joe biden

was on day one of his first. you have said trump is not the same man he was when he ran in 2016. your campaign is running ads of trump confused and he said, "he has lost the zip on his fastball. you are saying that he is no longer if i want to be president. is that what you think? >> father time is undefeated. the idea that we're going to put someone up there that's almost 80 and there are going to be no effects from that, we all know that's not true, and we have an opportunity for a next generation of leaders and we need a president who can serve two terms. and i don't think that donald trump would get elected and the democrats want him to be, and they're going to turn the screws. >> do you think that he's unfit to be president? >> i think we need to have somebody younger, when you get up to 80, the media is making a big deal about what he said in his comments, that's not how he

coveraged. he didn't fire dr. fauci, didn't fire christopher rey. he said that he was going to drain the swamp and build the wall and make mexico pay for it, and we don't have the pal and he said in 2016 that he would have the largest deportation in history. and he did less than barack when he was president. some of the policies that he ran on in 2016, i was cheering him on, but he didn'tdeliver. 100% of the things that i promised as governor i delivered and i beat the left time and time again and that's what i'll do for you as president. we have to start winning again as a party, yes winning the election but we have to start getting these issues. i will go in and wreak havoc on this bureaucracy, and we're going to bring a reckoning. [ cheers ] [ talking at the same time ] >> the question was very

direct. is he fit to be president or isn't he? the rest of the speech is interesting, but completely nonresponsive, and if we were in a courtroom, they would strike the answer and say governor desantis. >> they would say -- >> you're a smart man. >> no they wouldn't. >> is he fit? >> you have your thing. >> i don't have my thing. here's the thing. >> thing. we do not want to do -- >> you're talking about him being 80 years old, is he fit? >> governor desantis. [ talking at the same time ] >> i'm going to come to you. finish. >> look, father time is undefeated. i don't know how he would score on a test, but i know this, we have an opportunity to nominate

someone for two terms who is going to be spitting nails on day one, and for 8 years deliver a big result. we should not -- >> he won't answer. >> who is almost 80 years old. >> he's afraid to answer. >> no, i'm not. >> either you're afraid or you're not listening. [ talking at the same time ] >> no one can hear you, they can't hear you. you finish. >> look, i'm a simple guy, okay? i hear the question and i answer it. is he fit or isn't he? i'll succeed, you are fit, ron. you are a new generation, you're 44 years old. i wish i was still 45 years old. >> 45. >> well, congratulations, i would still take 45. is he fit or isn't he? and this is the problem with my three colleagues. they're afraid to offend. i'll tell you something, if

you're afraid to offend donald trump, then what are you going to do when you sit across from president xi, sit across from the ayatollah, you sit across from putin. you have to be willing to offend with the truth. [ talking at the same time ] >> si promised ron desantis a minute. >> it's not about offending, it's about pointing outdo you want to elect somebody who will be older than biden was when he went in in 2021. i don't think that he's as bad as biden is at all. but in a four-year period, it's not a job for somebody pushing 80. we need somebody younger and somebody who can go in there and clean house on day one and. >> here's my issue with all three of my colleagues on this debate stage. all of them have been licking donald trump's boots for years for money and not endorsements.

ron desantis, you were a great governor but wouldn't have been with out begging donald trump finish that endorsement. and same thing with chris christie as a lobbyist and prepping him for the debates last time around. these people are not monday morning quarterbacking the decision he made. the real enemy not donald trump, it's not joe biden, it's the deep state that at least donald trump teamed to take on. if you want somebody to take power, why aim i the often person on the stage who can say that january 6th does look like it's an inside job, that the government lied to us for 20 years about saudi arabia's involvement in 9-1-1, and the placement theory is not a right wing conspiracy theory but a statement of the democratic party's platform, that the 2020 election was indeed stolen by big tech, and the 2016 election, the one that trump won for sure

was stolen from him by the national security establishment, the trump russia conclusion that we know is false. i'm the only person who can say these things, and not people licking his boots and monday morning can being and criticizing when it's convenient. >> governor christie, you do not favor a ban on trans medical treatments for minors, the surgeries involve cutting off body parts when these kids cannot legally smoke a ciga cigarette. ids kids who go from hormones puberty blockers have a much bigger captains of winding up sterile. aren't you way too out of step on this issue to be the republican nominee? >> no, i'm not, because republicans believe in less government not more and less involvement with government and not more government in people's

lives, and you know what, megyn? i trust parents, and we're out there saying that we should empower parents in education and where they go to school, a and i grow, and we should be emp empowering them with the values that they believe in in their homes, and yet we want to taking other rights away. i'm sorry, as a father of four, i believe there's no one who loves my children more than me. there's no one who loves my children more than my wife. there's no one who cares more about their success and health in life than we do. not some government dur bureaucrat. you look at these jokers in congress. it takes them three weeks to pick a speaker and up to two days ago, they could not appropriate somebody in the military united states senate who earned their new rank, and we're going to put my children's health and my decisions in their

hands for them to make those decisions? for joe biden to make those decisions? for me and my wife, let me say this, this is not something that i favor. i think it's a very, very dangerous thing to do. but that's my opinion as a parent, megyn, and i get to make the decisions about any children and not everybody else. and every parent out there watching tonight, you start to turn over just a little bit of this authority, the authority they're going to take from you next, you're not going to like. i'll stand up for parents each and every time. >> there are. >> you do not center the right. >> i have a followup question for him. here's my followup question, you talk about parental rights, let's talk about them. when you were governor in 2017, you assigned a law with guidelines in schools dealing with transgender students. those required schools to accept a child's preferred gender identity even if the minor's

parents objected. >> not true. >> and said there's no duty for schools to notify the parents if they change their identity, allowing it to remain a secret between the school and the child and how is any of that parental rights? >> that's simply not true. that's simply not true. that law was put into effect in 2018 and regulated in 2018 after i was out of office, megyn. we did not issue those guidelines, and you're wrong about that. simply wrong, i've stood up each and every time. >> disqualifying with this one. >> i stood up every single time for parents to be able to make the decisions for their minor children. every single time, parents should make those decisions and by the way, every once in a while, parents are going to make decision that's we disagree w. 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. >> as a parent, you do not have the right to abuse your kids. this is mutilating these minors, and these are irreversible procedures, and these are things that other countries in sweden, once they started doing it, saw incalculable damage and shut it down. i signed legislation in florida banning the mutilation of minors because it's wrong, we cannot allow this to happen in this country. and i know that chris disagrees with me and i think that he has an honest position and nicki disagrees with me and opposed the bill to ban it, and said that the law should not get involved with it, and this flows from the governor of south carolina, they had a bill saying that men should not go into girl's bathrooms, and she killed that bill and bragged she killed that bill. and i don't think that men should be going into

little girl's bathrooms and i think it's wrong and we have to protect them from that. >> i'm going to come to you and promise 10 seconds. >> i think that the north star, transgenderrism is a mental health disorder. we don't let you smoke a cigarette until you're 18 or have alcohol until you're 21 and i challenge ron desantis to go a step further, use federal funds just like ronald reagan did, the drinking age is 21, and we can do the same thing for gender mulelation or chemical cast race, i'm crystal clear and that's where i stand. it's a mental health disorder and that's where we need to be at. >> so first of all, ron had canned to lie because he's losing. >> i'm not lying, it's on tape. >> so first of all, i will say that when i was governor, ten years ago when the bathroom situation came up, we had maybe

a handful of kids that were dealing with abissue, and i said, we don't need to bring government into this, but boys go into girl's bathrooms and girls go into girl's bathrooms and if anybody emphasis has an issue, they use a private bathroom. now ten years later, we see that this issue has exploded and this shows how hypocritical ron continues to be. when he was running for governor and they asked him about that, he said he didn't think that bathroom bills were a good use of his time. you can look that up. >> i signed a bathroom bill in florida -- [ applause ] >> so the idea that you would say that i was against that -- >> you killed it, i assigned it. i stood up for little girls and you didn't do it. and i was just in south carolina, some of the legislatures told me at the time there were boys going into the girls and that's the whole reason they did it. and when she does that

explanation, that doesn't hold water. this is the upstate of south carolina i signed the bill and protected the girls and she did not do it, i know that. >> you are not going to talk about my state like that, because i will tell you for a factor, south carolinians never allowed that to happen and we did not have that issue at the time. what i have always said is boys go into a boy's bathroom and girls go into a girl's bathroom, and i also say that biological boys shouldn't be playing in girl's sports, and i'll do everything that i can to stop that, because it's a woman's issue of our time. >> women's sports, i get this stuff done. >> thank you, guys, we're going to move on. mr. ramaswamy, when discussing your hindu faith in september, you seem to take a shot at ambassador haley, who is also indian and converted to christianity as an adult. you said that shorten my name

and profess to be a christian and run. are you questioning nikki ha haley's christian convictions? and why has your campaign made a point of referring to her as her first name, though she has gone by nicki her whole life. >> she should be able to pronounce my name correctly. and i will call her nicki when she pronounces my own name right. by question her authenauthentic, and that's deeper. we were just talking about the trans issue, and this is a symptom of a deeper cancer in american life. identity politics, this new religion that says your race and sexuality, it's dividing this country to a breaking point and i've spoken about this to the left. i preach this to the left but it's even worse when republicans try to play the same game. we're talking about that trans issue and nikki haley's campaign

launch video sounded like a bud lite add talking about how she would tick in heels. at the first debate, she said only a woman can get this job done. that's what she said. and after the third debate after i criticized ronna mcdaniel after five years of failed leadership of this party and nicki, she said i have a woman problem. nicki, i don't have a woman problem, you have a corruption problem and that's what people need to know. nicki is corrupt. this is a woman who will send your kid to die so she can buy a bigger house, this is the problem, using identity politics more effectively than kamala harris, it's a form of intellectual -- puppet masters. this is how the game is played. the puppet masters put up their puppet and i reject the use of identity politics in this party. it's a cancer coming from the

left and i'm sick of the double standards, and the people of this country are too. >> governor haley, would you like to respond. >> no, it's not worth my time to respond to him. >> using identity politics every step. >> we're not going to give you a response to the question that was to you. okay, we're going to move onto this. by arraignment by the republican national committee, we have two questions for you about the justice department and our election system, here's tom fitton with judicial watch, and governor christie, this is for you. >> president trump and many of his supporters claim federal law enforcement agencies have abused his civil rights for the last eight years by, among other things, spying on him and now prosecuting him while having treated hillary clinton and joe biden with kid gloves. a recent gallup poll shows that americans think more highly of

the u.s. postal service than the fbi or the justice department. what would you do as president to restore the faith of the american people in these age agencies? >> . >> first off, i'm the only person on this stage who has actually done the job in the department of justice. i was in the state of new jersey, in the third largest by president bush in 2001, and it was annual extraordinary time to be on the front lines of fighting the greatest attack in this country since pearl harbor and i'm proud of the years i spent in the justice department and one of the reasons i am, i had an attorney general when i came in, john ashe croft and he stood up and told us that our job was to make sure that justice was done every die, regardless of partnership, gender, race or any other consideration, and that's what we did for 7 years, and in a

time when our country was at its greatest moment of danger in the last 40 years, we did exactly that. and there was not another domestic terrorist attack on this soil. so what i would do as president, having had that experience and the only one having had that experience, to pick an attorney general who will absolutely do the same thing that john ashe croft did. to pick u.s. attorneys who will only care that justice is done with out regard to any other consideration, but the facts that are presented and whether someonele is guilty beyond the reef, and the government can prove it. we have had attorneys general like eric holder and loresta lynch and jeff sessions, and now our current attorney general, who have not met that standard. and the only way you restore people's faith in the justice system is to put someone like that in charge of the justice department and then as president

get the hell out of the way on anything that involves criminal investigations. if a president is involved in trying to do something and put their thumb on the scales, which donald trump says he will do, that makes people of less likely to believe in our justice system. >> governor desantis, back to you, back to tom fitton. >> many americans are concerned about elections. a federal judge ruled that pennsylvania must count mail in a ballots, and alabama, they don't require any identification to vote. what should states do to increase voter integrity and confidence for the 2024 ele election? >> tom, thanks for the que question, and thanks for what you guys do in judicial watch, there's a lot of corruption in this government you do a great job. 20 years ago, florida elections was a joke. everybody would laugh at t i came in and removed a couple of supervise from south florida, we

require voter i.d. universal. no zucker bucks, no mass mail balloting and no ballot harvesting. we have an agency that prosecutes people from violating election laws. the result of that in 2021 and 2022, we counted millions and millions of votes on election night. produced the result and it was transparent and that's not happening in the country. let me tell you that as a nominee, not every state is where we need it to be. there's ballot harvesting in places like nevada. i'm not going to fight with one hand tied behind my back. i'm going to super organizations in every state. if they're harvesting, we're harvesting. i want to change rules in florida and other states. and until then, in the justice department and the fbi. i remember being in iraq with the fbi on the ground and then i was a special assistant.

i used to have such high regard for these agencies and what they did with donald trump with the russia collusion was one of the biggest abuses of power in history. they need to be cleaned out and i'll have a new fbi director on day one, and we're going to clear them out. buckle your seatbelts, there's going to be a new sheriff in town. >> back in 1 minute, china up next. ( ♪♪ ) growing up, hughes and cowboys were one and the same. my daddy's a cowboy. i'm a cowboy and i'm raising a cowgirl. and discovering that my family come from farmers, for generations. this life is in our blood. and we ain't stopping no time soon.

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my name is jon lynch. i'm a member of the national guard. i use my tiktok channel to benefit military members and their families. there was a gap in between all of this knowledge and the audience that needs to know about it. tiktok allows for me to reach the military community. i'm not here to make millions of views or be famous, but i keep making the videos because i know it can help people. if my platform was taken away, it'd be devastating

because the people that i've been able to help and benefit their lives, it all goes away. (female) i grew up in a home that didn't have running water. my shoes alwaysple that had holes in them.help i know how it is to be poor.

i listened to a message of dr. stanley's, talking about, you know, how you never really live your life until you actually give it away. he kinda gave me that push to get out there and really do something. ♪♪♪

>> welcome back to the final gop presidential primary debate of 2023. we're going to talk about our college campuses. starting with you, ambassador haley. house republicans yesterday h hauld elite university pres presidents up to capitol hill to answer for displays of antisemitism on college cam campuses. these leaders, including the president of harvard were asked if calling for genocide of the jews wering for school policies of harassment and intimidation, and all of them said that veers into conduct. how would you think the schools and balance of society should balance free speech against the need for radical activists for intimidating others. >> it was disgusting to see what happened. if this had been the kkk doing protests on the campuses, every

one of those presidents would have been up in arms, and this is just as bad. the idea that they would allow that kind of pro hamas protests or agree with the genocide of jews and said that they need context on that, there is no context on this. this is what we need to do. we have to get formen money out of our universities, you have arab money, chinese money and others, and we need to go to every university and say you either take foreign money or american money, bub the day of taking both are over, and the second thing we need to do, a mistake in the definition of anti-zionism. if you think that israel doesn't have the right to exist, that's anti-semitism, and the third, we need to ban tiktok once and for all. let me tell you why, for every

30 minutes that someone watching tiktok every day, they become 17% more anti-semic, and more pro hamas based on doing that, we know that 50% of adults 18-25 think that hamas was warranted with what they did with israel. that's a problem. when campuses don't go and protect when they have these rallies and you have students that are scared, we need to go to the universities and say if you're not going to protect these students and acknowledge antisemitism, we'll take your tax exempt status away. >> staying with you, ambassador haley, on october 6th, they had a clear i.d. view of hamas, and according to the "new york times," they had the attack plan and anyplaced it as an aspiration. in our country, the fbi told the senate panel just yesterday, he

sees "blinking lights everywhere and the threat level has gone to another whole level since october 7th. which of the threats facing our country do you worry could blind side us? >> what worries me and keeps me up at night is what happens between now and election day when joe biden is in office, that's what worries me more than anything else. but i'll tell you, america right now is acting like it's september 10th. we better remember what september 12th looks like, because it only stakes one. when you have open borders and letting people come in, iran knows that the easiest way to get? through the southern border and we're not doing anything to stop it. we have to get the foreign infiltration out of our country, whether in schools or social media or foreign lobby being to members of congress and we need to start securing america again. until we do that, we're going to be a threat. iran and china want to destroy

the west. we have to start acting strong again and start protecting americans, right now, americans don't feel protected and we're not doing anything to strengthen that. joe biden continues to be a problem and that will change okay election day. >> governor desantis, if china invades tie one, would you send american troops? >> we need to deter that from happening. we need a strategy of denial so we are deterring xi's ambitions, it's going to work, we have a long standing policy and we'll follow that. but here's the thing, taiwan is important not just because of semiconductors, but important because if china is able to break out of this island chain, they're going to have commerce in the pacific, they will use that for terrorism. some of the guys supporting

fantastic haddie on wall street, they grovel to china, and every time something happens, they have to do this. and they're already pudding a huge amount of authorities. so deterring china's number one security task that i will do as president and we'll succeed. the 21st century needs to be an american century, and we cannot let it be a chinese century. >> mr. ramaswamy, i'm coming to you next on tie one. you said if you want to stop xi from invading tie one, let's open a branch of the nra in taiwan and put an ar-15 in the hands of every team and train them how to use it, and that will give xi a taste of american exceptionalism. the president of taiwan ann announced a zero gun policy, and why do you keep repeating it? >> it's part of a broader deterrent strategy.

i respectfully degree with ron. i think that the next u.s. president needs to be clear that the u.s. will absolutely defend tie otaiwan, and we need to getn with india, and take it to the next level. they need to be able to block the sea where china gets most of its middle eastern oil supplies. and that's critical. and i believe that the second amendment is a way to prevent autocrats, it has worked in america and why not in taiwan? so it's part of a broader strategy but we need to be spec about our deterrent strategy or xi jinping is encroaching by the day. and the reason we're doing it is because we're scared, because we depend on them for our modern bay of life? it's because nikki haley's latest friends like larry fink have commingled economies with be block rock and chevron, they

can't drill here and not the constraints in china. it's our economic depends on china that makes us scared. if it were a russian spy balloon, we would be going hard on them instead of turning the other way as we are with china. it comes down to our economic acceptance, we cannot spend on them for pharmaceuticals and economic dependence. the jets that we make in this country fend on china. >> thank you, mr. ramaswamy, ambassador haley, would you like to respond? >> when it comes china and taiwan, the one way that bekeep china from going into taiwan, one that we win in ukraine and protect our friends and let china know that there will be hell to pay if they go into taiwan, they need to know that there's a force that's going to go against them. and they need to know it's not just going to be the united states. that is why we need to build our

partnerships with india, south korea, japan, with the philippines, with australia, we need to start pulling that alliance together. and the way we do that, on day one, we look at the fact, if china pulled the rug out from under us tomorrow, would we be ready? think about what happened during covid. everybody told you to wear a mask, they were made in china, and everybody told you to take a covid test, they were made in china. everything that happened, if you go to the drugstore, all of those medicines are made in china, and we need to make sure that we're not reliant on china for anything related to our national security. and let's start focusing on doing deals with our friends now. >> thank you, governor chris christie,weigh in on that, and u think that arping everyone family with an ar-15 is a plausible? >> i don't think that we have constitutional authority for taiwan to be give them a second amendment, they can only do that

for themselves but i want to be clear once again, i want to play the role of actually answering your question, which is if china went after taiwan, you're absolutely right. i would as president have us go in militarily and defend them and i'm not afraid, these economic relationships mean nothing if china is going to come and act in that region of the world however they see fit. it's not right. and i'll say this about what, i heard from nicki earlier. she said that donald trump was good on trade. he wasn't. and the proof that he was not good on trade with china, all he did was impose tariffs, which raised the prices for every american, and you want to know what has contributed to inflation in this country? yes, it's government spending and yes, the fact that we're spending too much money but it's the increases in donald j. tr

trump's tariffs and one last thing, you can't say that he was good on trade because he didn't change one chinese policy in the process, he failed on it. >> thank you, governor chris christie, and governor desantis. switching subjects here. for 15 years, republicans have been burned by politicians' promises to repeal obs obama ca, and trump promised to replace it with something terrific, and you were promising something better but florida has more uninsured people than any other state. and why should americans trust you more than others on this issue? >> i think that we have millions of americans who do not have access to affordable healthcare, and it's not just getting some type of card and medicaid because a lot of time zone they don't have access to doctors, you have access to care. and we have millions of people who don't have access to good doctors and hospitals.

florida did not expand obs observeakaca obamacare. but you're going to go after the cost and we're paying too much for everything. you need price transparency and you need to hold the pharmaceuticals accountable and hold insurance and big government accountable and we're going to get that done. i think it's very important economically and for the country that we get that done. >> i actually wanted -- this is a very personal issue to our family. i wanted to recognize my wife who is here today. badass surgeon, and she did c cases with cancer survivors today and we'll be back at 7 a.m. in columbus, ohio taking care of those patients in the or. and on the front lines, people who have not swallowed for years, and here's something that is, is happening in our healthcare system. they'll pay for everything like

feeding tubes and doctors to be pill pushers but for the procedures to make the patients better, we have a broken healthcare system that doesn't pay for it. my wife in many cases doesn't get paid for those procedures, and she does them anyway because it's the right thing to do, but it does not work system wide. so here's the answer. we do not have a healthcare system in this country, we have a sick care system, we need to start having diverse insurance options in a competitive marketplace that cover actual health. preventive medicine, diet, exercise and lifestyle and otherwise, and here's the way we do that, end the antitrust exceptions for health insurance companies, and that's where competitive marketplace begins. >> through operation warp speed, the trump administration and private industry developed a covid vaccine in record time. the program protected the drug companies from virtually all lawsuits from vaccine injuries.

the critics say that it's a black hole of bureaucracy, 10,000 claims filed and only 8 payouts so far with no hearings and no appeals. mr. trump said that he's very proud of warp speed. should he be? >> this question specifically on liability goes back to reagan and reagan is a president who i admire and many of us do. and reviving that spirit is going to be good for this country in many ways, but one of the areas that he earned was is this special form of lobbying where one manufacture, a vaccine manufacturer cannot be sued for liability. and as part of my legislative agenda, we are repeal that. people who have been harmed by those vaccines deserve the ability and they cannot be, one of the things that we learned from the covid epi pandemic, fre

speech, if we had been openly allowed to debate the merits of those vaccines, they would never have been allowed. it's time for a clean divorce, let deputies be companies, but i don't like the crony capitalism. this dates back a long time in both parties and we need to end the lobbying and i personally believe that if you have been working in the government, you should not lobby in that government for ten years, if you've been a an elected government official, be they boeing or pharmaceutical companies, you should not join the board of that company for 10 years after. the leader of the fda ended up on the board of pfizer and nikki haley, deals with boeing, ends up on the board with boing. we need basic principles that end corruption in government. that's how we got health exceptions and pharmaceutical exceptions. end the corruption. >> we need a reckoning for what

this government did during covid-19, that plugs the mnra shots. they put it out and it was experimental and then the government tried to mandate it. saying that you don't have the right to put food on your table if you don't take an mnra shot. and florida, we blocked that and provided protections for everybody so they wouldn't lose their job, and you have the fda approving o'an mnra shot for 6-month-old babies and they're doing it because big pharma will make money. i'm going to go in there, cdc, nih and fda, we're going to clean house and there's going to be a reckoning. nobody is being held accountable for any of the damage and they're going to try to do it again. when i'm president, none of ths will ever happen gep. >> thank you, and we'll be right back in just a few minutes for our closing statements from our four candidates at the

republican primary debate. i'm patriotic kenny. and hi, i'm amanda. kenny's, the content, and i'm the creator from patriotic kenny on tiktok. can i say something? i didn't know nothing about tiktok, and once i got involved with tiktok, i loved it. one day i had texted and texted and hadn't heard back from him, and i got really worried. my scooter broke down. i went into a depression. how do you feel about that? pretty sad. and i posted it to show that kenny's not always happy. within 24 hours, people had donated over $5,000.

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>> welcome back to the newsnation republican primary debate here in tuscaloosa, alabama. we're going to do one final question before closing statements and we want to get you all in, so we're going to give you 45 seconds for this last one. governor christy, we're going to start with you. which former president would you draw inspiration from for your own presidency and why? >> i would draw inspiration

from a ronald reagan. in the past year, i wrote a book about him called what would reagan do? and it's going to come out in 2024, and what i learned more than anything else, ronald reagan was a slave to the truth, he stood up for the truth whether popular or unpopular. in 1984, he stood up against the john birch society. he would not put up with our party standing for lies and deceit, even if it gave him political progress. that's the kind of president i will be, and i will draw that inspiration from the 40th president of the united states, ronald reagan. >> i have to sigh when you look at george washington, the responsibilities of how do you go and take on this great american experiment and make sure that the people are protected and they always knew that government was to secure the rights of the people and

never meant to be all things to all people. and you look at abraham lincoln and the challenges and the division that happened in our country and the ability to lead in spite of the loud noises and say what will bring out the best in people to get us to go forward is always something that's important and i think that we need that now more than ever. >> govern desantis? >> reagan and washington and lincoln, excellent and one of the guys that i'll take is calvin coolidge. people don't talk about him a lot. but he's one of the few presidents that got almost everything right and he understood the proper role of government under the constitution, we need to restore the u.s. constitution as the centerpiece of our national life and that requires a president who understands the original underring of the constitution, who has a good sense of the bill of rights and who knows how we have gone off-track with this massive fourth branch of government, this administrative state which is imposing its will

on us and being weaponized against us. so silent cal, the country was in great shine when he was president of the united states and we can learn an awful lot from calvin coolidge. >> over to you, mr. ramaswamy, to conclude our history lesson. >> i will say ron picked a president who was born on ju july 4th and thomas jefferson 33 years old when he wrote the declaration of independence and he invented the swivel chair while he was writing the declaration of independence. that's the founding spirit, the pioneers, the guys on the lewis and clark ed peditions and what would he say about today's republican party? we haven't talked about it much tonight but it's one of the interesting ideological discussions we're having in our party, freedom of speech. but get to express your mind friel no matter how heinous the

opinion. >> thank you, mr. ramaswamy and believe it or not, it's time for closing statements. governor chris christie, wouldu like to begin? >> i want you to all picture in your minds election day. you'll all be heading to the polls to vote and that's something that donald j. trump will not be able to do, he will be convicted of felons before then and his right to vote will be taken away. [ booing ] here's the bottom line, 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 injuries of joe biden. when my colleagues raised their hands and said they would support him even if he was a convicted felon but they were confirming the lies that he has told to the american people. if you are too timid to take on president trump, xi, put and not the a toll a. the borders and

the streets, they will sense that timidity and take advantage of the failure of leadership. we have to get back to the old idea that every person is responsible for their own conduct, even a president. i'll be the kind of president who has the humility that knows that you work for the people. it's not the other way around. i will earn your trust, i want to earn your vote. >> thank you, governor chris christie, mr. ramaswamy? >> i will use this to address a topic that has not been talked about, and that is this climate change agenda that's shack ling this country like a set of handcuffs. i said it in the first debate, request i and i stand by it. it the climate change agenda has nothing to do with the climate. 98 russia collusion in the deaths in the last century. more people die in cold temperatures this year than warm ones, and yet iowa farmers, i

met farmers who are about to have a carbon capture pipeline built across their land, using eminent domain to do t that's unconstitutional and it's wrong, and if you thought covid was bad, what's coming with the climate agenda is far worse, we should not be bending the knee for a new religious, that's what it is. it's a substituted for a modern religious, we're flogging ourselves and bowing to this new god of climate and that will end on my watch. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. our country is in chaos. we see it on the southern bo border. we see it on our streets in our cities and we see it on college campuses. we feel it with our economy, with inflation, with debt and we feel it around the world with wars in europe and within the middle east. we have to stop the chaos, but you can't defeat democrat chaos

with republican chaos and that's what donald j. trump gives us. my approach is different. no drama, no vendettas, no whining. i envision an america where we're protected from illegal immigration and chinese infiltration. i envision an america where we unleash our economy and reject socialism. but more importantly, i envision an america where we rediscover our national purpose and our pride. >> thank you. >> i crush joe biden in the polls and if you give me this chance, we will crush him in november and take our country back. >> thank you, ambassador haley. [ cheers and applause ] >> governor desantis. >> we are in jeopardy of being the first generation of americans to leave to our kids and grandkids an america also prosperous and less free than the one that we inherited and i

refuse to stand idly by and let that happen. but we have to fight the people that were doing this to us. you can't be these establishment republicans who cave at the first sign of opposition and i'll fight for you. we need to bin as a party, win the election, and win on these big issues and nobody has defeated these people more than that i have done in the state of florida on issue after issue, we have won and won big and that's what we'll do for you. we also need leadership. it's not about doing what's easy but being willing to set out that vision and knowing that they're going to send arrows at you and i will fight the good fight. >> thank you, governor and thank you all of you. thank you for watching.