Repeated accusations and attacks.
On the stage of the final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis face off alone for the first time, duking it out as if the race to 2024 were a two-way race. Almost forgetting that the front-runner for the White House is Donald Trump – he is leading in all the polls and has snubbed them for the debate by favoring a town hall on Fox – Haley and DeSantis go head-to-head for two hours without compromise and accuse each other of telling lies on dozens of occasions.
The debate followed Chris Christie's surprise announcement that he was withdrawing his candidacy and while Trump announced his unchallenged vision on Fox. “Joe Biden is chaos, not me,” the former president said, guaranteeing that he would “put an end to sanctuary cities” for migrants when he returns to the White House. Trump then declared that the stock market will collapse if he loses in the 2024 election and admitted that he already knows who his running mate will be. “I can’t say yet,” the former president said.
Haley and DeSantis criticized Trump from afar. The former president “lost the 2020 election, Biden won. “He reiterates that January 6 was a wonderful day while it was terrible for me,” Haley said, preventing “four years of chaos” if the former president were to win and reiterating that the United States needs new leaders Generation.
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ANSA Agency Trump, when I was president, the world was afraid of me: “Joe Biden is the chaos, not me.” (HANDLING)
“The next president must have moral clarity” and a vision “for twenty years, not four or eight years,” the former South Carolina governor added. “I want Trump to be here because I'm running against him,” he clarified, still trying to disparage his rival DeSantis, against whom he had launched the website desantislies.com to collect all the Florida governor's lies. His campaign “exploded”: “He can’t handle it, how is he supposed to get along with the country?” said Haley.
DeSantis did not endure the attacks passively: The former UN ambassador “might be more liberal than California Gov. Gavin Newsom,” he said, noting that in the “White House we don't need an accountant, we need a leader.” Haley is “weak” on immigration, she added, and also criticized Trump on migrants. “He promised to build the wall on the border with Mexico and increase the deportation of illegal immigrants, but he didn't: he deported fewer immigrants than Barack Obama,” he said, emphasizing the need for a wall on the border . The tone between the two White House officials has become even more tense over Ukraine. Haley reiterated her support for Kiev because “if Russia wins, China wins” against Taiwan. However, DeSantis reiterated his opposition, noting that Haley is more concerned about the Ukrainian borders than the American borders.
The bitter 120-minute battle in front of the cameras between Haley and DeSantis is unlikely to change the outcome of the Iowa caucuses, where Trump has a double-digit lead. However, the two are competing for second place and will face each other ruthlessly, at least in the first primaries, in order to establish themselves as the anti-Trump.
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