GOP presidential hopefuls Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are back on the debate stage Monday night to appeal to voters just five days before the Iowa caucuses.
Former President Donald Trump was the only other primary candidate to meet the 10% polling benchmark to qualify for the debate, but as with the previous four debates, he declined to participate. Instead, Trump will appear on a Fox News town hall in Iowa at the same time.
CNN is hosting the debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, starting at 9 p.m. EST. CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are moderating the debate.
Neither former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie nor entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy qualified for the debate, and Christie formally withdrew from the race Wednesday, just hours before the debate was to begin.
“It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination,” Christie said during an event Wednesday in Windham, New Hampshire.
Though Ramaswamy won’t be on the stage, viewers of the debate will reportedly have the opportunity to see him in a paid ad during the program.
Fox News exclusively reported Wednesday that Ramaswamy will run a campaign ad during the debate telling viewers to “turn this s— off” and accusing the “mainstream media” of “trying to rig the Iowa GOP caucus in favor of the corporate candidates who they can control.”
Ramaswamy also hosted a town hall live Wednesday night with podcast host Tim Pool.
Trump continues to hold a sizable lead in the polls, with Haley and DeSantis trading places for second or third place, depending upon the poll.
The following are highlights from the final debate before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15.
UPDATE: 9:52: Weaponization of the DOJ
DeSantis stressed the importance of ending “the weaponization of government.”
“The IRS has been weaponized against conservatives going back to the Obama administration,” he explained. “I was there for that. No one has been held accountable for doing that. You look at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice. The weaponization of federal power ends the day I become the president of the United States.
“There is going to be a new sheriff in town,” he added. “We’re going to restore the constitutional accountability that our Founding Fathers envisioned when they formatted the Constitution.”
The Florida governor said that he often speaks with “folks” who deal with “overbearing federal agencies,” promising to not only “reduce the size of government,” but also “to reduce the scope of government.”
“And in Florida, I’ve actually delivered on this,” he added. “Florida has the lowest percentage of state government workers per capita in the country, and the cost of our state government employees is the lowest in the country. No wonder why we’re paying down debt while we’re cutting taxes for people. That’s the way you do it.”
UPDATE 9:50 p.m.: DeSantis touted dropping the sales tax on family items.
“I also think it’s important that we lift people up, so in Florida, we eliminated all sales tax on every baby item, diapers, wipes, strollers, cribs,” he said. “We want families to be able to prosper in this country.”
He lamented the “breakdown in the American family,” and said, “We need to make it easier for people to raise children in this country.”
Last May, DeSantis signed a $2.7 billion tax cut bill that permanently exempted baby and toddler necessities from sales taxes. According to his office, the bill included a permanent exemption for strollers, cribs, diapers, and baby wipes.
The law, HB 7063, exempts baby cribs, including baby playpens, baby play yards; baby strollers; baby safety gates; baby monitors; child safety cabinet locks and latches, and electrical socket covers; bicycle child-carrier seats; baby exercisers; breast pumps; baby wipes; changing tables and changing pads; diapers; baby and toddler clothing; and more.
UPDATE 9:40: America must end all “normal trade relations with China,” Haley said, until fentanyl stops flowing from China to the drug cartels who smuggle it to America.
Haley claimed that Trump “didn’t deal with China when it came to stealing intellectual property, the fact they gave us [COVID-19], the fact that they have gone and continued to put up Chinese police stations and continue to threaten our military.”
DeSantis fired back, saying, “When Nikki Haley was governor of South Carolina, she was the No. 1 governor in America for Republicans of bringing China into her state.”
The Florida governor claimed that Haley has said China is a friend to America and argued that “bringing China into the state of South Carolina” was Haley’s “No. 1 achievement as governor.”
“I banned China from buying land in our state, and we kicked them out of our universities,” DeSantis said of his policies in Florida, a reference to Confucius Institutes.
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