Presidential Candidate Debates

Primary and General Election Presidential Debates

Republican Candidates Debate in Des Moines, Iowa

January 10, 2024

PARTICIPANTS:
Governor Ron DeSantis (FL); and
Former Governor Nikki Haley (SC);

MODERATORS:
Dana Bash (CNN); and
Jake Tapper (CNN)

TAPPER: Live from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, this is the CNN Republican presidential debate.

We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world watching us on CNN, CNN Max, CNN International, CNN en Espanol, and CNN.com.

Good evening. I'm Jake Tapper, moderating tonight's debate alongside my friend and colleague Dana Bash.

BASH: And just five days from now, voters here in Iowa will cast the first votes of the 2024 presidential race.

Tonight, the very first one-on-one matchup between top contenders Governor Ron DeSantis and former Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Former President Trump met the requirements for tonight's debate, but declined to participate.

TAPPER: Our commitment in this debate is to provide as much information as possible to voters, especially here in Iowa, before the first contests begin next week.

So, in choosing topics, we focused on the issues important to Republicans.

Let's bring out the candidates now.

Please welcome Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. [cheering and applause]

Please welcome former South Carolina Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. [cheering and applause]

BASH: Candidates, please take your positions behind the podiums while we remind you and our audience of the ground rules.

Each of you will have 90 seconds to answer questions, 60 seconds for responses and rebuttals, and 15 seconds for clarifications. Timing lights will remind you when time is expiring.

TAPPER: We also remind our audience here in the Sheslow Auditorium at Drake University to be respectful, so the candidates can hear the questions and can hear each other.

BASH: Just hours ago, the Republican field narrowed once again. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ended his bid for the presidency.

So, with one fewer candidate in the running, let's start with the decision voters here in Iowa are about to face.

Governor DeSantis, why should voters who are looking for an alternative to the current front-runner, former President Trump, vote for you, rather than former Governor Haley?

DESANTIS: Well, to people of Iowa, good evening. It's great to be in Iowa to have a debate here.

Donald Trump's running to pursue his issues. Nikki Haley's running to pursue her donors' issues. I'm running to pursue your issues and your family's issues and to turn this country around. I'm the only one running that's delivered on 100 percent of the promises that I have made.

We have delivered huge victories in the state of Florida, things that Republicans have been asking for, for a generation. I'm also the only one running that has beaten the left time and time again. We beat the teachers union on universal school choice. We beat Soros on crime. We beat Fauci on COVID. We beat the Dems on election integrity. And I beat the left by banning China from buying land in the state of Florida.

Now, Nikki Haley is running. We don't need another mealymouthed politician who just tells you what she thinks you want to hear just to try to get your vote, then to get in office and to do her donors' bidding.

She was in another state, and she said the people of Iowa's votes need to be corrected. This is somebody that wrote in her book that Hillary Clinton inspired her to first run for office.

I remember Hillary denigrating people on the Republican side as deplorables. We don't need a candidate who's going to look down on Middle America. We have had enough of that. I'm the only one that's going to be able to lead this country's revival.

I'm asking for your support, and I won't let you down.

BASH: Governor Haley, a response?

HALEY: Well, I think this is a time that we know that we need a new generational leader.

We have watched our country be in disarray. We see the world on fire, and we need someone who's had executive experience. I have been a two- term governor that took a double-digit unemployment state and turned it into an economic powerhouse. I was at the U.N. I dealt with Russia, China, Iran every day.

But, you're going to find out tonight that there is going to be a lot of Ron's lies that has happened. There are at least a couple of dozen so far that he has done. So, what we're going to do is rather than have him go and tell you all these lies, you can go to DeSantislies.com and look at all of those. There is at least two dozen lies that he has told about me, and you can see where a fact checker say exactly what's going to happen and exactly why it's wrong.

So, it will cover the fact that he is only mad about the donors because the donors used to be with him, but they're no longer with him now. And that's because he is upset about the fact that his campaign is exploding. You're going to see the fact that he has switched his policies multiple times, and we'll call that out tonight. But, every time he lies, Drake University, don't turn this into a drinking game, because you will be overserved by the end of the night.

DESANTIS: Well, I think this is interesting, because you can actually go to RonDesantis.com, because Nikki Haley has this tactic. If you hold her accountable to her record, first she'll say, I never said that. Well, one good rule of thumb, if she says she has never said something, that definitely means she said it, and then she'll say you're lying, you're lying. That means not only did she say it but she is on videotape saying it. And so, we have all the greatest hits. The reality is Nikki Haley is not somebody that has been willing to stand in and fight on behalf of conservatives.

You know, she ran for governor saying she was going to do universal school choice, and she caved to the teachers union. She didn't deliver that. In Florida, I delivered the largest expansion of school choice in the history of the United States. I beat the teachers union, and you know what the results are? When she was governor of South Carolina, she was rated 50th in education, dead last. You know, where Florida is under my watch, number one in the nation.

BASH: Your response, Governor Haley?

HALEY: Go to DeSantislies.com and you can find out for yourself. But, why don't we talk about the fact that if we're going to say this, when Ron was representing Florida, he said that he promised not to raise the debt limit when he got to D.C. Yet, he raised the debt limit by hundreds of billions of dollars. He used to support Ukraine. He supported Ukraine when President Obama was in office. Now, he is trying to copy Trump and saying that he no longer supports Ukraine, and doesn't want to give them foreign aid anymore. He also goes and says that he wants to talk about me insulting Iowans. Iowans know when you're telling a joke.

The fact that he is only running in one state is not the way you win President. I'm running it all states. But, he should tell Iowans why he authored legislation to ban the renewable fuel standard that's so important to Iowans' economy, and the fact that he co-sponsored five different pieces of legislation to get rid of it. And also, then he also said he would never do anything with Social Security. Yet, he voted three times to raise the retirement age of Social Security.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

HALEY: So, if you're going to talk about what you said --

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

HALEY: -- and you did, I think you've got your own explaining to do --

TAPPER: Well, we're going to --

HALEY: -- rather than telling lies about --

TAPPER: -- well, thank you, Governor. We're going to get to a lot of these issues in the debate. Governor Haley, when Governor Christie dropped out of the race just a few hours ago, he said the most important issue is "the character of the candidate". Governor Christie also said he ran because he knew he would be the only Republican candidate to speak the truth about former President Donald Trump. Do you believe Donald Trump has the character to be President again?

HALEY: Well, I think the next President needs to have moral clarity. I think you need to have moral clarity to understand that it's taxpayer money, not your own money. I think you need to have moral clarity to understand that when you're dealing with dictators in the world, that we always have to fight for democracies and human rights and protecting Americans and preventing war.

And so, when you look at Donald Trump, I have said, I think he was the right President at the right time. I agree with a lot of his policies, but his way is not my way. I don't have vengeance. I don't have vendettas. I don't take things personally. For me, it's very much about no drama, no whining and getting results and getting them done. So, I don't think that President Trump is the right President to go forward. I think it's time for a new generational leader that's going to go and make America proud again. That's what I'm going to try and do.

TAPPER: Governor DeSantis, what is your response to Chris Christie? Do you believe Donald Trump has the character to be President again?

DESANTIS: Well, I'm running because I'm the guy that's going to be able to engineer a comeback for this country. I appreciated what President Trump did. But, let's just be honest. He said he was going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. He did not deliver that. He said he was going to drain the swamp. He did not deliver that. He said he was going to hold Hillary accountable and he let her off the hook. He said he was going to eliminate the debt and he added $7.8 trillion to the debt. So, we need to deliver and get this stuff done.

And I think the difference between Nikki Haley and me, and I listened to all that litany of stuff, I debated the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom. I thought he lied a lot. Man, Nikki Haley made -- gives him a run for his money and she may even be more liberal than Gavin Newsom is. We are in a situation here in Florida.

And as Republicans, you need somebody that is going to be in there and fight for you. And Nikki Haley, any time the going gets tough, any time people come down, she caves. When you need someone standing and fight for you, don't look for Nikki Haley. You won't be able to find her if you had a search warrant. [applause]

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

Governor Haley?

HALEY: Look, I think I dealt with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea every day. No one ever said I caved. I defended America and I fought for America. [applause]

But I'll also say this. This is not a time where you have to have pettiness. I wish Donald Trump was up here on this stage. He's the one that I'm running against. He's the one that I wish would be here. He needs to be defending his record. Right now he's not defending the fact that he allowed us to have $8 trillion in debt over four years that our kids are never going to forgive us for. The fact that he didn't deal with China when it came to stealing intellectual property. The fact that they gave us COVID. The fact that they have gone and continued to put up Chinese police stations and continue to threaten our military.

He didn't do enough to make sure that we were really standing with our friends and doing some other things. What we need is a leader that's not looking at four years and eight years. We need a president that's looking at 20 and 30 years. Because I want my kids to have a good future. I want them to have one without debt, one where they can read, one with secure borders, one where we have law and order, and one where America is strong.

BASH: Thank you. [applause]

DESANTIS: Well, with all due respect, you know, for her to single out Donald Trump on China, and, look, I think he could have been tougher on them, 100 percent. When Nikki Haley was governor of South Carolina, she was the number one governor in America for Republicans of bringing China into her state. She wrote a love letter to the ambassador saying that they were a great friend. She is on video saying China is a friend. She had a business, five -- Chinese business five miles from a military base. There is video of her on the website right in front of a Chinese flag saying that she works for them now.

So that was her number one achievement as governor was bringing China into the state of South Carolina. So you say you're going to look 10, 20, 30 years down the road? Why wasn't she doing that then when people were raising the red flags about it?

In Florida, I banned China from buying land in our state.

BASH: Yes, but, Governor DeSantis...

DESANTIS: And we kicked them out of our universities. That's what you need to be doing. [applause]

BASH: We're going to talk about China in a little bit. I want to talk about the economy, which according to a recent Des Moines Register poll shows that the economy is the top issue for caucus-goers here.

So, Governor Haley, the rate of inflation is down. Prices, though, are still high, and Americans are struggling to afford food, cars, and housing. What is the single most important policy that you would implement as president to make the essentials in Americans' lives more important?

HALEY: I think we have to acknowledge that Republicans and Democrats have both done this. I mean, the fact that they've done all of this wasteful spending, they did a $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill that expanded welfare that's now left us with 80 million Americans on Medicaid, 42 million Americans on food stamps. That's a third of our country.

What I will do is I think it's time we have an accountant in the White House. We have to have someone that respects taxpayer dollars. And we'll start by clawing back $100 billion of unspent COVID dollars that are still out there.

We'll go and instead of 87,000 IRS agents going after middle America, we'll go after the hundreds of billions of dollars of COVID fraud, 1 out of every $7. If 8 percent of our budget is interest, quit borrowing. Cut up the credit cards.

I had to balance a budget as governor. You have to balance a budget every day. Why is Congress the only group that refuses to balance a budget? We'll stop the spending. We'll stop the borrowing. We'll eliminate the pet projects and the earmarks. And I'll veto any spending bill that doesn't take us back to pre-COVID levels.

And then we want to make sure that we allow the middle class to breathe. We're going to eliminate the federal gas and diesel tax in this country and cut taxes on the middle class and simplify those brackets. And then we want to make the small business tax cuts permanent. They made corporate tax cuts permanent, but they made small business tax cuts temporary. Small businesses are the heartbeat of America. We need to prove it by making those tax cuts permanent. [applause]

BASH: Governor DeSantis, what's your response? How would you make those essentials more affordable for Americans?

DESANTIS: Well, I disagree with Ambassador Haley. We don't need an accountant in the White House, we need a leader in the White House. And that's what I would bring. [applause]

I've spoken with Iowans, visiting all 99 counties, and also folks all across this country. The American dream is slipping away. People are working hard. They're getting the most out of their God- given ability. They're doing everything right. And they're falling further and further behind.

Trying to afford a new home today, your monthly mortgage payment would probably be twice as much as what it would have been if you were starting out five years ago. We have to make the economy work their those folks.

Yes, I'm going to battle the spending. In Florida, you look and we have the national debt clock going up to $34 trillion. I see it. If you did a debt clock for the state of Florida, it would be counting down.

Because we've paid down 25 percent of our state debt just since I've been governor. We're going to open up all energy for production because that will be deflationary.

You know, Nikki Haley when she was governor, she promised she would never do the gas tax. Then she tried to raise the gas tax on hardworking South Carolinians. Here's the thing. We need to fly a flag of bold colors carrying the banner of putting the American people first, not the pale pastel of the warmed over corporatism of people like Nikki Haley.

BASH: Governor Haley, I want to bring you in, but because Governor DeSantis mentioned the gas tax, you do want to eliminate the federal gas tax. And that tax generated approximately $40 billion in 2022 and helps pay for road construction and repair.

So how would you fix America's roads and bridges if you take that money away?

HALEY: Well, first of all, bless his heart. Desantislies.com. We have never raised a tax.

DESANTIS: You try to.

HALEY: We've never raised a tax at all.

DESANTIS: You tried. You're on video.

HALEY: I can tell you right --

BASH: Governor DeSantis, she has the floor.

HALEY: So I can tell you that we killed the gas tax multiple times.

But what we said is if you want to raise the gas tax, you have to reduce the income tax by five times that amount. They didn't want to do it. We've killed taxes every step of the way.

But if he's going to talk about his economy, I think what we should say is why does Florida have the highest property insurance in the country? Why is it that it is named the American hotspot for inflation? Why is it that his state is now known to have the highest cost of living increases? And why is it that they're saying senior citizens can no longer afford to live in Florida? So that's the first thing I'll say. We don't need him doing that to our country.

When it comes to the gas tax, when we eliminate that federal tax, the money is collected in the states and they send it to the feds. The feds attach a lot of strings to it and send it back. 75 percent comes from the state, 25 percent comes from the federal government.

What they do when they add those strings is they pay for a lot of things that aren't roads, green spaces, sidewalks, all of those things, but they attach strings. I want that money to stay in the states. I want the states to be able to decide how to spend it. I don't want Washington bureaucrats deciding what we need for scenery and green space and all those other things. I want every state, including the state of Iowa, to make the decisions on how they spend their road spending instead of the federal government.

BASH: Governor DeSantis, your response?

DESANTIS: She kind of admitted that she did try to raise the gas tax, and she's on video saying this. I know she'll say she never said. But she did.

HALEY: You snippet that.

DESANTIS: She did -- she did do it.

HALEY: You took a little piece of that. That is not true.

DESANTIS: She also -- she also raise tax --

HALEY: You are lying again.

BASH: Governor Haley, Governor DeSantis.

DESANTIS: She was in South Carolina, that's on the record. And she even proposed a tax on groceries at one point. But I'm just thinking, have you seen your grocery bill lately? That's one of the things that's hitting working people the most, that groceries are going up probably twice as much what you do.

But 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. We want families to be able to prosper in this country. One of the things that's causing so much problem is the breakdown in the American family. We've done a lot in Florida to be able to rejuvenate that. But we need to make it easier for people to raise children in this country so that we can have strong families in a strong country.

BASH: Governor DeSantis, at a CNN town hall last week, you said you support a flat tax, which is a single income tax rate for every American. Under your plan, would working families pay the same tax rate as billionaires?

DESANTIS: I would only do it if people are better off than they are now. I mean, I want people paying less taxes. Actually, if you think the last year we have numbers for the federal government took in the highest percentage of taxes from the economy since World War II, and yet they're going deep into debt.

We have a spending problem in this country. It's not a tax problem in this country. And if you had something that was simple and transparent, not only would that better for economic growth, it's also better to end the weaponization of government.

The IRS has been weaponized against conservatives going back to the Obama administration. I was there for that. No one's 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's going to be a new sheriff in town. We're going to restore the constitutional accountability that our founding fathers envision when they formatted the Constitution.

And you know, I've talked to folks who have overbearing federal agencies. I mean, you have farmers who have the EPA coming on their farmland because there's maybe a puddle there, waters of the United States. Give me a break.

So we're going to reduce the size of government, but we're also going to reduce the scope of government.

And in Florida, I've actually delivered on this, 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 to do it. [applause]

BASH: Governor DeSantis, 15-second point of clarification. The question was whether or not working families would pay the same amount...

DESANTIS: They would pay...

BASH: ... as billionaires?

DESANTIS: They would pay less than what they're paying now. The way I view it is, OK -- and you'd exempt people -- so you would pay no tax for -- for working-class people. It would only be as you get above. Because I think the first $40,000, $50,000 grand, that's just to subsist. And even some places, you can't even do that.

So you would have no tax up to a certain point, and then it would just be a single rate. So if somebody...

BASH: Thank you.

DESANTIS: ... makes $100,000, they pay a certain amount. If someone makes $200,000, they pay...

BASH: Thank you, Governor DeSantis.

DESANTIS: They make twice as much, and they pay twice as much.

BASH: Governor Haley, your response?

HALEY: I mean, first of all, you just can't trust what he says. I mean, that's the biggest thing. We don't have a grocery tax in South Carolina. And I never once raised taxes, period.

But what I will tell you is, it is to call into question, why did he promise he'd never raise the debt limit and he turned around and he raised it?

And then you want to go, and you see one side of what he says early on, and then he changes it. So here he goes and he says that he is all for energy independence. He wants to get the EPA out of the way. Well, why did he run on the fact that he wanted to ban fracking and ban offshore drilling?

Why did he go and author that legislation to eliminate the renewable fuel standard that so -- that matters so much?

And why now is he suddenly coming to Iowa and saying, "Oh, never mind, I don't mean all of that?"

Why did he call Trump and say that he wanted him to stop drilling nine miles into federal waters? Why is he now saying this?

Why do you come to the people of Iowa and say one thing when you campaigned and, on day two of your office, you banned fracking; you banned offshore drilling,; you turned around and authored and led the charge on banning the renewable fuel standards...

BASH: Thank you, Governor.

DESANTIS: Yeah...

HALEY: You've got to stand up for those things that you did.

DESANTIS: You've been -- you've been beating that dead horse -- that's been the...

HALEY: Because it's true, Ron. It's true.

DESANTIS: We're looking forward to be able to open up energy production, and definitely here in the Midwest, with biofuels. I'm the only one that checked all the boxes from the Iowa renewable fuel standard, because I've actually visited all 99 counties. I've actually shown up to people's farms. I've sat and I've listened to people about what they're going through, how their economy is structured and how it's important that we're producing energy here in the United States.

I never want to go hat in hand, like Biden has done, to Venezuela or Saudi and begging for energy. We're going to be able to open up production. We're going to choose Midland over Moscow. We're going to choose the Marcellus Shale over the mullahs. And we're going to choose the Bakken over Beijing.

Energy independence isn't even -- it's not -- it's good for consumers. It's good to reduce inflation. And it's one of the best things we can do for our national security. So we'll do that on day one, and we are going to reverse Biden's green new deal and the electric vehicle mandates. We'll save the American automobile.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor. [applause]

This has been one of the biggest years for illegal border crossings into the United States. Last month alone, 225,000 migrants illegally crossed the southern border. It's a record high, overwhelming the Border Patrol resources that are already stretched thin. Mayors across the country say their cities are being pushed to a breaking point.

Governor DeSantis, former President Trump famously promised to build a wall on the southern border. He obviously did not get that done. You have promised to finish the job. How will you succeed where he failed?

DESANTIS: We will build a wall. We will actually have Mexico pay for it, in the way that I thought Donald Trump was. We're going to charge fees on remittances that workers send to foreign countries, billions of dollars. We'll build the wall.

He also promised record deportations. Donald Trump deported fewer people than Barack Obama did when he was president. Biden's let in 8 million people just in four years. They all have to go back. We have to enforce the rule of law in this country.

Think about what's happening to our country. Just this week, we saw the news that a high -- that a school in Brooklyn, New York, had the kids stay home. They were not able to go to school, told you can't go get an in-person education. Why? Because their -- the city's commandeering the school to house illegal aliens in it.

Talk about putting Americans last. You're putting these kids out of an education because you can't control the border?

Biden has failed in this endeavor. He has not taken care that the laws of this country be faithfully executed.

Do not trust Nikki Haley with illegal immigration. That's like having the fox guard the hen house. She's on tape at the Aspen Institute -- she'll say she didn't say it -- she was chastising conservatives, saying it's disrespectful to illegal aliens to say that they're criminals.

They're violating the law. It's disrespectful when people come to this country illegally and impose burdens on our communities and run drugs into this country. That's what's disrespectful.

She's weak on immigration. She's bankrolled by people who want open borders. And she said there shouldn't be a limit on immigration; you should work with corporate CEOS...

TAPPER: Thanks, Governor.

DESANTIS: That is pale pastels. That is warmed-over...

[crosstalk]

TAPPER: Thank you so much.

So, Governor Haley...[cheering and applause]... Governor DeSantis and also Donald Trump are attacking you for that comment in 2015 in which you said undocumented immigrants should not be called -- quote -- "criminals."

At the time, the full context is you said -- quote -- "We don't need to talk about them as criminals. They're not. They're families that want a better life, and they're desperate to get here" -- unquote.

Do you still feel that way?

HALEY: I saw them. When I was at the United Nations, I saw them. That doesn't mean we should let them into our country.

I mean, first of all, I will tell you that, when I was governor of South Carolina, we passed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country. Obama sued us over it, and we won. We fought Obama on illegal immigration. We fought Obama on migrant kids. We fought Obama on Syrian refugees. We fought Obama on Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

I have always said we are a country of laws. The second we stop being a country of laws, we give up everything this country was founded on.

But I will tell you, in passing that toughest illegal immigration law in the country, we passed E-Verify, which I want to take national, which is where businesses have to prove that the people they hire are in this country legally. I passed it within six months of being governor. Ron didn't pass it for five years.

He only waited to pass it when he decided to run for president. What we need to do is not just ban a wall. We need to put 25,000 Border Patrol and ICE agents on the ground and let them do their job. We need to defund sanctuary cities once and for all, no more safe havens for illegal immigrants.

We need to make sure we go back to the remain-in-Mexico policy, so that no one even steps foot on U.S. soil. And instead of catch-and- release, we need to go to catch-and-deport. That's the only way we will stop the incentives of these illegal immigrants coming across.

Biden turned around and gave half-a-million Venezuelans temporary protective status. That's half-a-million driver's licenses, half-a- million Social Security numbers. All that does is incentivize them to pick up the phone...

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

HALEY: ... call their family members, and tell them to come on ahead.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

Governor DeSantis?

DESANTIS: She did bring...[applause]

When she was governor, she did bring Syrian refugees, and she got criticized for that.

HALEY: That is not true. DeSantislies.com.

DESANTIS: She also, in her comment, when she says...

TAPPER: Hold on one second. Hold on one second, Governor.

HALEY: That is not true.

TAPPER: We will give you your turn in a second.

Governor DeSantis?

[crosstalk]

DESANTIS: ... get it. It's noted.

HALEY: Unbelievable.

DESANTIS: So, the disrespect comment, she's talking about that they're all families.

If you look right now at the border, these are military-age males, many of them, and they're coming from all across this world, not just from Central American. In fact, you have got them from China, Iran, Russia, the Middle East. When I was down there a couple years ago, because I have sent people down there, you had people from Libya and Haiti.

This is a ticking time bomb for this country. There are, of course, going to be terrorist cells that have come in. It's like the lowest- cost way to be able to harm this country. Just send people across the southern border.

Nikki Haley also opposed the border wall in 2016. She said that -- she ridiculed it when Donald Trump was for that. I'm telling you, you need a wall. You can't trust politicians to do this. If the wall's there, it's a physical fact of life. And it's a huge step to restoring this country's sovereignty.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor DeSantis. Thank you, Governor DeSantis.

Governor Haley?

HALEY: Go to DeSantislies.com. I said, you can't just build a wall. You have to do more than build a wall. It was having the wall and everything else. You can't trust what Ron is saying.

But this is a bigger issue. This is more than him just constantly being desperate and throwing things on me. This is the fact that we have to realize my parents came here legally. They came the right way 50 years ago. They put in the time. They put in the price. They are offended by what's happening on the border.

And my mom would always say, if they don't follow the laws to come into this country, they won't follow the laws when they are in this country. And we have to start treating this like it is. This is putting harm on our schools, on our hospitals. Taxpayers are paying for it. You see these mayors are now upset about it.

The only reason Eric Adams is now upset, why? He shouldn't be a sanctuary city then. That's why we have to defund sanctuary cities. Now Governor Abbott finally did to them what's been happening to Texas for so long. We have got to put an end to this. It's dangerous, and it doesn't even count the fentanyl that's happening.

TAPPER: Thank you. Thank you, Governor. Thank you. [cheering and applause]

Governor DeSantis, there are more than 10 million undocumented immigrants already living in the United States, according to Pew Research.

Will any of them be allowed to stay in the United States under your administration?

DESANTIS: The number of people that will be amnestied when I'm president is zero.

We cannot do an amnesty in this country. [applause]

First of all, all it's going to do is cause more people to want to come illegally. So you have got to enforce the law. It's got to be consistent. People got to know it's there.

You also have to remove benefits for people who are here illegally. California, you can go, illegal alien, and you get free health insurance coverage. You're here illegally, and they're doing that? We should not let states provide these benefits.

In Florida, obviously, we don't do that. We don't allow the driver's license and all that. But some states do. And it creates a magnet for people coming in. So, federally, no benefits, no enticements to come in, and then the states, we're going to crack down on sanctuary states and sanctuary cities.

And I showed the hypocrisy of all this back in 2022 because we have a program to transport illegal aliens to sanctuary jurisdictions. And one of the places we sent 52, beautiful, liberal Martha's Vineyard.

And you know what? These are folks that were on their high horse, saying how they were sanctuary jurisdiction, saying nobody is illegal. All refugees are welcome. That's what they had in their town. The minute even 50 came up, they called the state of emergency and deported them off the island the next day. How do you think Texas feels? How do you think all these other communities feel that are overwhelming -- being overwhelmed?

So, we cannot have liberal elites in this country imposing policies on the rest of us that they are not willing to deal with the consequences of them.

TAPPER: Governor Haley, by the -- when you're President, will any of the more than 10 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. be allowed to stay in the country under your administration?

HALEY: You have to deport them. And the reason you have to deport them is they're cutting the line. You've got people who have done this and tried to go through the right way. You can't have them go and jump the line, and suddenly do that. And that is actually what will get them to stop coming, is when they do realize they get to the wall and they have to turn around and go back. It's a dangerous process of what happens for them to try and migrate here.

But, when I was at the United Nations, and we had this, which is another reason why we need to have Trump here defending himself and talking about what he would do going in the future, because it's a problem. I was on the ground in Honduras and Guatemala. And what we saw as a lot of the reason why they were coming from there is because of gangs and drugs. And so, what we did was we had our military go and train them on how to deal with gangs. We went and put drug boats on the water to keep the drugs from coming. But, we said you have to have them processed from here. You can't have them come. We were able to stop that flow. We've got to go back to do that. But, we need to end it once and for all. Donald Trump didn't do that. That's why he needs to be here debating on the stage right now.

BASH: Governor, thank you. Let's turn to foreign policy. You have expressed different visions for how the U.S. should approach the international complex. And I want to start with Ukraine. It's been nearly two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, and there is still no end in sight to that war. Governor Haley, you say that this is a "war about freedom that Ukraine must win." Governor DeSantis says, "We need to bring this war to an end." Do you believe he shares your commitment to a Ukrainian victory?

HALEY: Nobody knows what he believes, because when President Obama was in office, he supported foreign aid to Ukraine. Now, he is copying Trump and trying to act like he doesn't want to support Ukraine. But, let me tell you why Ukraine should matter. First of all, I don't think we should give cash to any country, friend or foe, because you can't follow it. You can't hold it accountable. I don't think we need to put troops on the ground. And Ukrainians want to win this themselves.

But, dictators always say, always do what they say they're going to do. China said they were going to take Hong Kong. They did. Russia said they were going to invade Ukraine. They -- we watched it. China says Taiwan is next. We better believe them. Russia said once they take Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. Those are NATO countries, and that puts America at war. This is about preventing war. It's always been about preventing war.

If we support Ukraine, that's only 3.5 percent of our defense budget. Biden and no one else is telling the American people the truth about that. The Europeans have put in more than that, and they should. It's their neighborhood. But, this is a pro-American freedom-loving country. And we better remember that you have to be a friend to get a friend. And we needed a lot of friends, September 12. We've got to make sure that we're having the backs of the right friends, because if Russia wins, China wins. There is a reason the Taiwanese want us to help the Ukrainians. And that's because they know if Ukraine wins, China won't invade Taiwan. This is about preventing war.

BASH: Governor DeSantis.

DESANTIS: I supported Trump's policy vis-a-vis Russia, Ukraine, and it was successful. You know, the Biden policy has not been. But, Nikki Haley is basically a carbon copy of what Biden is. It's an open-ended commitment. They want another $108 billion. They will not tell you when the -- they have achieved their goal. And this is going to go on maybe hundreds of billions more into the future. I think a lot of people have died. We need to find a way to end this, because our priorities for national security, of course, the border, which we talked about, and people like Nikki Haley care more about Ukraine's border than she does about our own southern border, which is wrong.

But, we also have to look at what's the top threat to this country. It's the Chinese Communist Party. We are not doing what we need to do to have adequate hard power in the Indo-Pacific. And here is the thing. We don't have enough resources, being $35 trillion in debt, to continue doing hundreds of billions of dollars. We got to focus on our issues here at home.

And we've got to deal with the top threat that we face, which is China.

HALEY: And then I wonder why you raised the debt when you were in Congress, because we're all paying for that.

What I will tell you is, this is the lie they're telling the American people over and over again. It is so wrong to say this. They're saying you have to choose between Ukraine or Israel, or Israel and -- and securing the border. Supporting Ukraine is 3.5 percent of our budget. I don't want cash going. It's equipment and it's ammunition. If we support Ukraine and Israel, that's only 5 percent of our defense budget. If we support...

DESANTIS: So you're going to borrow that?

HALEY: If we support Ukraine, Israel, and secure the border, that's less than 20 percent of Biden's green subsidies. You do not have to choose when it comes to national security. This is about keeping Americans safe. This is about preventing war. This is about keeping our military men and women from having to fight a war. And you only do that when you focus on national security, not telling lies to the American people that they have to choose. That is wrong. That's never been the case. [applause]

[crosstalk]

BASH: Governor DeSantis...

DESANTIS: Here is the problem with what she's saying. She -- she doesn't articulate how this comes to an end, except she was asked after the last debate by, I believe, Megyn Kelly, and she said, you bring to it an end by bringing Ukraine into NATO. But, of course, we're a NATO country. So if you bring Ukraine into NATO, that puts the United States at war. Megyn said that to her, and then she basically gave a word salad as to how you go from there.

So they have sent cash. She supports this $106 billion that they're trying to get through Congress. Where is some of that money going? They've done tens of billions of dollars to pay salaries for Ukrainian government bureaucrats. They've paid pensions for Ukrainian retirees with your tax dollars?

We've got homeless veterans. We have all these problems. This is the U.N. way of thinking that we're somehow globalists and we have unlimited resources to do. [applause]

You know, I think here's the problem. You can take the ambassador out of the United Nations, but you can't take the United Nations out of the ambassador. [applause]

HALEY: First of all, I have never said that we should give salaries or benefits or anything else to Ukrainians. I have said it again, Ron, so stop lying. DeSantislies.com.

DESANTIS: But you supported the aid packages.

BASH: Governor DeSantis, she has the floor.

HALEY: So you go -- I did not support the aid package. I support equipment and ammunition going to Ukraine. I think it is incredibly important that we're honest and say we have to focus on national security. Don't go and lie to the American people to make them think we can't do this.

You turned around and raised the debt limit. You're the one that's talked about, look at what you did to Florida. But think about the fact that he is talking about where is this money going to come from. You -- the best way to tell about a candidate is to see how they've run their campaign.

He has blown through $150 million. I don't know how you do that. Through his campaign, he has nothing to show for it. He spent more money on private planes than he has on commercials trying to get Iowans to vote for him. If you can't manage a campaign, how are you going to manage a country? Which is exactly...[applause]

[crosstalk]

DESANTIS: Well, listen, I'm proud of -- I'm proud that in the state of Florida, we're ranked number one for economy of all 50 states by CNBC. Number one...

HALEY: Highest cost of living.

DESANTIS: ... in education. She was ranked number 50 in education...

HALEY: Highest...

DESANTIS: ... when she was governor of California (ph)...

HALEY: Highest insurance in the country.

BASH: Governor Haley, he...

[crosstalk]

DESANTIS: ... wasn't able to do school choice. She didn't deliver big tax cuts. We're also number one for net end migration, number one for GDP growth amongst large states, number one for talent development, number one for new business formations, and on and on it goes.

So the success we've had in Florida, I can cite the statistics. It's important. But just look at how people are voting with their feet. They're leaving California. They're leaving Illinois, New York, all these states, and they're coming to Florida in record numbers because we're doing it right.

And not only have I cut taxes big time, where she didn't as governor of South Carolina, we've paid down 25 percent of our state's debt. That's how you manage the third-largest state in this country. Just imagine if we could do that for the United States of America. [applause]

TAPPER: So thank you. Let's stay on foreign policy. I want to turn to the Israel-Hamas war. You both have said that you unequivocally support Israel. You both have called for the complete elimination of Hamas.

Governor DeSantis, there are real disagreements within Israel about how to handle what happens in Gaza after the war against Hamas is over. Some Israeli cabinet officials are pushing for the mass removal of Palestinians from Gaza. Governor Haley told CNN last week she does not support that. Do you?

DESANTIS: So we've got to support Israel in word and in deed, in public and in private. And they need to be able to finish the job. Joe Biden is kneecapping them. He'll say one thing, then he goes and his base doesn't like Israel, so he has got to do all these other things. This is a time to recognize that they've suffered the most deaths of Jews, murder of Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas wants a second Holocaust. They want to annihilate the state of Israel. So I think to be a good ally, you back them in the decisions that they're making with respect to Gaza.

Look, there's a lot of pluses and minuses with how you're doing this. But for us to be sitting in Washington second guessing them, I don't think that's the right way.

We also have a disagreement. Governor Haley and I, when she was at the U.N., she supported the idea of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. The problem with that is the Palestinian Arabs don't recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. So doing a two-state solution doesn't create something that's going to lead to a lasting peace. It creates a stepping stone for Israel's destruction.

So under no circumstances as president am I going to pressure Israel to risk their security to do a so called two-state solution. She was wrong when she embraced that. And we're right to say we trust Israel to make these decisions. They're a good ally of ours. We should trust their judgment on these sensitive issues.

TAPPER: Governor DeSantis, 15 seconds, 15 seconds clarification. Do you support the mass removal of Palestinians from Gaza?

DESANTIS: So as president, I am not going to tell them to do that. I think there's a lot of issues with that. But if they make the calculation that to avert a second holocaust, they need to do that. I think some of these Palestinian Arabs, Saudi Arabia should take some.

TAPPER: Thank you.

DESANTIS: Egypt should take some. They've never been willing to accept any of these facts in their own neighborhood.

TAPPER: Thank you, governor. Thank you, governor. Governor Haley.

HALEY: Well, first of all, we need to understand the reason we need to support Israel is Israel's a bright spot in a tough neighborhood. They are the tip of the spear when it comes to defeating terrorism. It has never been that Israel needs America. It has always been that America needs Israel.

When I was at the United Nations, I fought every day for Israel. And if you would have listened to what I said at the United Nations, a two-state solution wasn't something that was possible because Israel would always come to the table and the Palestinians wouldn't.

But right now, we have to make sure that Israel has the support that it needs. There should be three things. Give Israel whatever it wants to get the job done. Two, eliminate Hamas once and for all. And three, do whatever it takes to bring the hostages home.

But it's really rich that Ron is going to act like he suddenly cares for Israel when he brought the person to Iowa that's the most anti- Israel Republican in the state, the person that went and voted against Israel's right to exist in Congress, the person that voted with the squad against antisemitism on college campuses.

TAPPER: Thank you, governor.

HALEY: And you brought that person --

TAPPER: Thank you, governor.

HALEY: -- to Iowa to go and campaign with. That's your friend.

TAPPER: Governor DeSantis, she's obviously referring to Congressman Tom Massey from Kentucky.

DESANTIS: Yes. I mean, that's just cheap garbage. But here's the thing. When the attack --

HALEY: It's true.

DESANTIS: -- happened against Israel, I knew it was going to be a big deal for Florida. We have one of the largest Israeli American populations in the country, and we've been a haven for orthodox Jews in particular since I've been governor. And you know what? Biden wasn't helping Americans get out of the war zone. These are people that were stranded. So I did an executive order. We scrambled planes and we rescued over 700 Americans from Israel and brought them back safely to the state of Florida. You got to step up and you got to lead when things like this are happening.

We also have gone after the antisemitism on our campuses. We did that early in my administration. You didn't see our college presidents doing some of the things that you've seen.

I just announced in the state of the state address yesterday or two days ago that we are going to say not just for Jewish students, anyone who's having religious, being persecuted or being marginalized because of their faith in any college around the country, we're going to waive the transfer requirements so that people can come to Florida and be safe.

TAPPER: Thank you, governor.

DESANTIS: What they are doing to Jewish students has been reprehensible.

TAPPER: Thank you, governor.

DESANTIS: We're not going to let it out.

TAPPER: So there are -- I'm coming to you. There are growing fears of this war escalating into a broader regional conflict. And, Governor Haley, just yesterday the U.S. Navy shot down 21 missiles and drones fired by Iranian backed militants in the Red Sea. Iranian backed militants are now also attacking U.S. and western interests in Syria and Iraq. Your fellow South Carolinian Republican senator Lindsey Graham is calling for the U.S. to conduct retaliatory strikes inside Iran. Would you order strikes inside Iran?

HALEY: Well, first of all, notice Ron didn't say anything about the fact that he did bring that most anti-Israel Republican into this state to campaign. He also hasn't told you that the only Republican Jewish state legislator left his campaign because he wasn't dealing with the neo-Nazi marches and wasn't dealing with antisemitism properly.

When it comes to Iran, what we have to understand, there would be no Hamas without Iran. There would not be Houthis without Iran. There wouldn't be Hezbollah without Iran. And when you look at the strikes that are happening in Iraq and Syria, that is because of Ron. They're pulling the puppet strings.

What we need to do is the idea that we've had over 130 strikes on our men and women in Iraq and Syria is unconscionable. We're supposed to have their backs. And Biden has been slow. He's been hiding in a corner and he hasn't dealt with it.

We need to go and take out every bit of the production that they have that's allowing them to do those strikes. It's hugely important that we do that. And you can't do that if you have a secretary of defense that is in ICU and the president doesn't even know about it.

Look, there's a lot of pluses and minuses with how you're doing this. But for us to be sitting in Washington second guessing them, I don't think that's the right way.

TAPPER: Governor DeSantis, 15 seconds, 15 seconds clarification. Do you support the mass removal of Palestinians from Gaza?

TAPPER: Thank you.

DESANTIS: Egypt should take some. They've never been willing to accept any of these facts in their own neighborhood.

TAPPER: Thank you, governor. Thank you, governor. Governor Haley.

TAPPER: Thank you, governor.

HALEY: And you brought that person --

TAPPER: Thank you, governor.

HALEY: -- to Iowa to go and campaign with. That's your friend.

TAPPER: Governor DeSantis, she's obviously referring to Congressman Tom Massey from Kentucky.

DESANTIS: Yes. I mean, that's just cheap garbage. But here's the thing. When the attack --

HALEY: It's true.

And you know what? Biden wasn't helping Americans get out of the war zone. These are people that were stranded. So I did an executive order. We scrambled planes and we rescued over 700 Americans from Israel and brought them back safely to the state of Florida. You got to step up and you got to lead when things like this are happening.

We also have gone after the antisemitism on our campuses. We did that early in my administration. You didn't see our college presidents doing some of the things that you've seen.

TAPPER: Thank you, governor.

DESANTIS: What they are doing to Jewish students has been reprehensible.

TAPPER: Thank you, governor.

DESANTIS: We're not going to let it out.

What bothers me is, how does Biden not talk to his secretary of defense every single day, knowing that we have a war in Europe, a war in the Middle East, that we have our American military with strikes going on them; we've got brain injuries.

My husband is deployed right now. As a military spouse, the idea that the secretary of defense would not even be in contact with the president, much less in contact with his staff, is unforgivable.

TAPPER: Governor DeSantis?

[applause]

DESANTIS: After the attacks against Israel, anyone with half a brain knows Iran is behind this. They fund Hamas. They fund Hezbollah. We did a special session of the legislature down in Florida. We expanded sanctions against Iran. If we were our own country, we'd be the 14th largest economy in the world.

The root of this is Biden came into office and he relaxed the sanctions on Iran. They've had massive amounts of money flooding into their country, just like under the Obama administration. They take that money and they use it to fund jihad around the world.

I'm the only one running for president that served in the armed forces. I deployed to Iraq back in 2007, 2008. So I understand what our -- what our military goes through. I would never put our troops in harm's way, like Biden is doing in the Middle East, without defending them with everything they got.

If you harm a hair on the head of one of our servicemembers, you are going to be -- have hell to pay. He's leaving them out to dry, and I think it's disgraceful for a commander in chief to do that.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor. [applause]

The CNN Republican Presidential Debate, live from Des Moines, Iowa, will be right back after this. [applause]

Go to CNN.com for real-time debate analysis. Stay with us.

[commercial break]

BASH: Welcome back to the CNN Republican presidential debate live from Drake University in Iowa.

Let's talk about a big question in the Republican Party right now. And that is, what is the role of government, and should it use its power to go after businesses and private entities that take actions that don't align with conservative values?

Governor DeSantis, you used your powers in Florida to take on Disney after the company criticized an education bill that you signed into law. How does that square with the traditional conservative view that small, limited government is best?

DESANTIS: The proper role of government, if it means every -- anything, it's to protect our kids.

And I have stood for the innocence of our kids. [cheering and applause]

It is wrong -- it is wrong to sexualize the curriculum. It's wrong -- my wife and I, we have got a first grader, a kindergarten and a preschooler.

This is something that's important to us personally. It's wrong to tell a kindergartner, like Disney wanted to do, that you can change your gender or tell a third grader that you're born in the wrong body. So I stood up against -- yes, the media didn't like it, the left didn't like it, and Disney didn't like it.

And they're the 800-pound gorilla in the state of Florida. Most people, most corporate Republicans would have caved. I stood and I fought for the kids. We took on Disney, and we defeated that and we won that fight and our kids are better off.

Now, Nikki Haley sided with Disney. She invited them to South Carolina, even though they were involved in transing kids. That is not what we need to do. But I think that's similar. She is representative of this corporatist element of the party. For example, she supported $900 million in subsidies to Boeing when she was in South Carolina. And then, when she got out of office, she took a seat on their board, and she made millions of dollars. Then she gave speeches, paid speeches, to a lot of Wall Street interests, didn't publish what she said. We don't know what she promised them.

And she made millions of dollars doing that. Now they're the ones that are funding her campaign. So we need to stand up for the people, and not bow down to woke corporations. And we know Nikki Haley will cave to the woke mob every single time. [cheering and applause]

BASH: Governor Haley, a response?

HALEY: Government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people.

And what we don't need is government politicizing anything. The first thing I will say is, again, DeSantislies.com, because I have never said anything related to the transgender stuff he says. I have always fought to protect kids. I have always said that boys need to go into boys' bathrooms, girls need to go into girls' bathrooms, that we shouldn't have any gender transitions before the age of 18.

Just like we don't have tattoos before the age of 18, we shouldn't have gender transformation or puberty blockers. But I will tell you that it's really interesting that Ron talks about this -- Disney, because Disney has been woke for a long time.

They were against the immigration situation that Trump was doing. They were against the Paris climate agreement when I did it. They were against the pro-life bill in Georgia. Ron didn't have any problem with that. As a matter of fact, he gave them the largest corporate subsidies in Florida history.

DESANTIS: That's false.

HALEY: He had tech exemptions that he gave -- didn't give any tech exemptions to anybody but Disney.

Yet, when they went and criticized him, he got thin-skinned and suddenly started to fight back. We don't need government fighting against our private industries. We are not woke in South Carolina. I will always invite businesses to come to South Carolina.

But the one thing you don't do is, government doesn't bully our businesses. And that can't happen. And Ron has determined anybody that offends him...

BASH: Thank you, Governor.

DESANTIS: So...

HALEY: ... he goes after them, and he will use government...

[crosstalk]

BASH: Thank you, Governor.

Governor DeSantis.

[applause]

DESANTIS: She just said she's always fought to protect kids. But when she was governor of South Carolina, they had a bill to protect girls from men going into the bathroom. She killed it. And she has bragged about it for years that that happened. She didn't stand up and fight the kids. She caved to the Chamber of Commerce and the corporations.

She said she is against the surgeries for minors. That wasn't what she said this summer. She was...

HALEY Desantislies.com.

DESANTIS: She was asked about it, it's on video. And she said the law should stay out of it. I -- I criticized her in the last debate. She took a lot of heat. So then she has flipped and said that there now should be the law involved. She said she supports a federal law. I'm glad she's come to the right thing.

But here's the deal, it goes back to that young kid in the town hall that she had where he said, Nikki Haley, you are the new John Kerry, you are for it before you were against it. [applause]

HALEY: It's a shame that we had to put up Desantislies.com. Honestly, if he would spend as much time trying to prove why he thinks he would be a good president, he would be doing a lot better in the polls. The reason that he spent and blown through $150 million and gone down in the polls is because he spent more time trying to lie about me than he is about telling the truth about himself.

I have never been...

DESANTIS: But you didn't kill the bathroom bill.

HALEY: I have never said that we should have any gender operations or surgeries. You're lying about that.

DESANTIS: So the law should...

[crosstalk]

TAPPER: Governor Haley has the floor.

HALEY: When it comes to the bathroom bill, I will say, first of all, that was 10 years ago. We had a handful of kids that may have had that issue. And what I made very clear at that time in the state is girls go into girls bathrooms, boys go into boys bathrooms. And if there are any other exceptions, they use a private bathroom.

I have fought for women's sports and making sure that biological boys are not in women's sports. And I'll continue to do that. I have always said we have to raise strong girls. Strong girls become strong women. Strong women become strong leaders.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

HALEY: None of that happens if we have biological boys...

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

[crosstalk]

[applause]

Governor Haley -- Governor Haley, according to the U.S. Department of Education in 2017, the year you left office, South Carolina schools ranked in the bottom 10 nationwide in both reading and math scores. Given that, why should voters concerned about K through 12 education support you rather than other Republicans?

HALEY: Because I think what we did was we knew that there was an issue. We knew in South Carolina if a child couldn't read by third grade they were four times less likely to graduate high school. So what we did is, we started holding kids back instead of pushing them forward. We brought in their parents. We did reading remediation. And we set them up for success.

We've got to do that all over the country. We only had 31 percent of eighth graders in the country are proficient in reading, 27 percent of eighth graders are proficient in math. If we don't do something, we're going to be in a world of hurt 10 years from now.

That's why I want to take as many federal programs from D.C. as we can and send them down to the state level. Think education. We can move a lot of K through 12 programs down to the state level, reduce the strings that are attached, and that way states can handle it themselves. People in Iowa know best what types of education they need.

Secondly, parents should decide what types of education their children get, what mode of education. And we should have complete transparency in the classroom. No parent should ever wonder what's being said or taught to their child in the classroom. That's why we'll have all of the curriculums online for every parent to see.

And we need to start putting vocational classes back in our high schools. Let's teach our kids how to do things. We did that in South Carolina. We had apprenticeships. We taught our kids how to build the things we are making.

When we start putting education back in the states and away from D.C., that's when we'll start to see that we are going back to the basics. We're doing what parents want. And we're doing what the industries...

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

HALEY: ... in that state need.

DESANTIS: Well...

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

[applause]

Governor DeSantis, I'm coming to you right now. Governor DeSantis, you have supported limits on what subjects can be taught and how, including American history in Florida schools. You have also made it easier to remove books from public school libraries. You say you want to, quote, "make America Florida." Do you want to implement those Florida school policies nationwide?

DESANTIS: I'll get to that in a sec. So Nikki Haley said she wants parents to decide on the education. She campaigned for governor saying she was going to do school choice, to be able to give private scholarships, particularly to low-income families. And she was governor and never did it. She caved to the teachers union.

I delivered the biggest school choice expansion in the history of the United States. We beat the teachers union. We've even done paycheck protection so that school unions -- so that teachers aren't force to do dues, and now they're choosing other things. So we've done it right in Florida. And the results speak for themselves.

We have one of the top performing fourth grade reading and math in the country. And if you just took our charter school population, 365,000 kids, disproportionately low income, racial, ethnic minorities, if they were their own state, they'd be in the top five in performance. Everyone can succeed, but you've got to have a leader who's going to fight the teachers unions and is going to deliver school choice.

Governor Kim Reynolds did that here in Iowa, who's endorsed me. Nikki Haley did not. She failed. And if she can't do it in the reddest state in the country of South Carolina, how are you going to be able to succeed in Washington, D.C.?

Now, in terms of what we've done, we believe in empowering parents, and there are certain standards about what's age and developmentally appropriate. It's wrong to have pornographic materials in fourth or fifth grade. And you know what's happened? They'll go to school board meetings all around the country. They'll start reading it and they, oh, no, no, it's too graphic. You can't read it here. You can't put it on the 6:00 news.

Well, if it's not appropriate in a school board meeting and you can't put on the 6:00 news, why are you jamming it down the throats of a fourth grader?

TAPPER: Governor, just a point of clarification, do you want to implement Florida's education policies nationwide?

DESANTIS: It depends on the policy. School choice universal, yes. I don't want a nationalized curriculum. I think that that's a bottom up thing. I want to get rid of the federal Department of Education, get that weight off the backs of the state and local governments. But we are going to do nationwide scholarships through the tax credits, and that's going to bail out a lot of poor kids throughout this country.

TAPPER: Governor Haley?

HALEY: I have fought for school choice in my entire career because I think parents know their children best, and I think we should always do that. That's why we passed charter school legislation in our state. That's why we empowered homeschoolers in our state. That's why we changed the funding formula. So, we lifted up challenged areas without bringing down the wealthy areas.

We wanted school choice. I had a Republican legislature that wouldn't do it, but we pushed hard to get that done. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it across the country. But what we have to do is we have to make it state centric. We've got to get these programs down to the state level. We've got to let the focus be on teachers. Teachers right now have to be the guidance counselors, the pastors, the nurses and everything in between. And, oh, by the way, they have to teach to a test. That's not what teachers want. Teachers want to do what they were taught to do. And that means math, science, reading, history, English, arts. That's it.

Schools can't be all things to all kids. They need to let the parents parent. They need to let teachers teach. And we need to go back to the basics in education so we get our kids --

BASH: Thank you. I want to move on.

DESANTIS: That is the problem, though. That word salad is the problem.

BASH: Governor DeSantis --

DESANTIS: She said she's always supported school choice and she failed to deliver. She blames other people. Leadership is about getting things done. Stop making excuses. Make it happen.

HALEY: If leadership is about getting things done, how did you blow through $150 million in your campaign, and you were down in the polls. You are not a man of word. No, I'm going to say --

DESANTIS: I think it's very instructive about what Nikki Haley sees the world.

HALEY: I think I have the floor.

BASH: Governor DeSantis, Governor Haley --

DESANTIS: What is more important here? She's saying somehow that that's not --

BASH: Governor DeSantis, it's Governor Haley's time. Go ahead.

HALEY: I think I hit a nerve. What I will tell you is, look, if you can't manage a campaign -- it's been a revolving door of political people in and out of his campaign. You've heard of campaign people going to blows with each other because they can't all agree. $150 million, and he spent more on private planes than commercials. I flew commercial. I stayed in residence inns. We went and saved our money. We made sure we spent it right because you have to understand, it's not your money, it's other people's money, and you have to know how to handle it. If he can't handle the financial parts of a campaign, how is he going to handle the economy when it comes to the White House?

And he goes, and he has been demeaning me over and over again, telling lies, desantislies.com, because he thinks it makes him look bigger. But in the one basic thing, you've campaigned for president in one state, you're invisible in New Hampshire, you're invisible. In South Carolina, you're in fifth place, you've got $150 million and you've gone down in the polls in Iowa. Why should we think you can manage or do anything in this country?

BASH: Thank you. Governor DeSantis?

DESANTIS: This is a great window into leadership because she focused on a lot of political process stuff, things that no voter cares about, and she couldn't tell you why she failed to deliver school choice to people in her state after she promised it. So, she says somehow that is the indicative of me.

No, leadership is about producing results. We've produced the results in Florida. We did universal school choice. We've cut taxes, we banned sanctuary cities on and on down the line, everything I promised, I delivered. She doesn't have a rationale for why she couldn't get it done. That is poor leadership. You look at me. Everything I promised I would do, I've delivered. And you can expect nothing less when I'm the president of the United States.

BASH: We're going to move on now.

HALEY: I need to respond to that.

BASH: Go ahead.

HALEY: So, you want to talk about leadership, and he wants to go and demean and put down. Let me tell you what leadership is. Leadership is the fact that I went into South Carolina that had 11 percent unemployment rate. Leadership is the fact that we turned it into an economic powerhouse, building planes, building cars, building tires.

We were named the beasts of the southeast. We moved the 11 percent unemployment down to 4 percent. We announced jobs in every county in the state. We moved 35,000 people on welfare to work. We changed our prison system to where we now have the lowest recidivism rate in the country. We passed voter I.D. We passed tort reform. We did pension form. We paid down our debt. We cut taxes. We made sure that people were proud again. We did eVerify in the first six months, not five years, like Ron.

So, don't go and pick on school choice and say that that's leadership. When I got to the U.N., we cut a billion dollars off the top, and we took the kick me sign off of our backs, and America was respected again at the U.N. I know what leadership is.

BASH: We're moving on to a topic, governors, that both of you have made central to your campaigns, and that is China. Governor Haley, American farmers were hurt by former President Trump's trade war with China. As a result, his administration paid out $28 billion in subsidies to farmers. You have vowed to be even tougher than Donald Trump on China. If your trade policies also end up hurting America's farmers, are you prepared to cut a check just like he did?

HALEY: Well, that's why Trump should be here on this debate stage. He should have to defend it. So, first of all, I've said China is our number one national security threat. I fought them every single day at the United Nations. I know what they're capable of. The first thing we have to do is we have to make sure we stop selling them any land and we take back the land they already purchased. We need to go to our universities and we say, you either take Chinese money or you take American money but the days of taking both are over. We need to stop all of the technologies that are going to China. Biden approved 70 percent of them. Trump approved even more than that. We have to tell them we're going to end all normal trade relations with them until they stop murdering Americans with fentanyl. And we need to make sure we build up our military.

But the biggest thing, I was very attached to China in terms of trade, and the one thing we'll do is we won't wait for the China to pull the rug out from under Iowans. What we'll do is instead, we will move that trade to where we have friends. We will go and build partnerships, India, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Australia, Israel. We will go and move that trade over.

Right now, you can ask our farmers when they go and they buy from China, China orders, cancels the order, then goes and tries to buy it cheap. That's what China does. Our farmers deserve better than that. We will get them trade deals.

When I was governor in South Carolina, we sold and we exported everything we were making in South Carolina. When I'm president, we will sell and export everything that's being made in Iowa to those that are our friends, not our enemies.

BASH: Thank you. Governor DeSantis, your response?

DESANTIS: The way you deal with China is threefold. One, we need more hard power in the Indo-Pacific. I'm a Navy guy. We need more sea power. We're going to build that up and we're going to have a strategy to deny their ability to invade Taiwan or to get beyond the first island chain. On the current course, they're going to take advantage of Biden and we're going to rue the day when that happens.

Second, we got to decouple our economy, particularly things that are significant to our national survival. And you've got to be methodical, strategic about it. There's a lot of moving parts there. But we're going to do.

Nikki Haley's not going to be able to do that because a lot of her supporters make a lot of money in China. And so she's going to talk tough, but she'll cave on that.

And then also with here in the United States, she's saying they shouldn't be buying land and be in the universities. When she was governor of South Carolina, the state gave China land and they were in the universities. As governor in Florida, I banned China from buying land and we kicked them out of our universities. That's what you want to do.

HALEY: DeSantislies.com, he has an economic development arm. You had an office in Hong Kong. On the website, it said that Florida is a great place for Chinese companies to do business. And then when we called you out on it, you had the website scrubbed. So, we know that that's the case. What I will tell you is we need to focus on what we're going to do to become less dependent on China, and we need to make sure that we look at it through a national security lens.

When we had COVID, everybody told you to wear a mask. It was made in China. They told you to take a COVID test, you turned it over, it was made in China. If you go down the drugstore aisle, all those medicines are made in China. We need to make sure we're getting medicines made here or we need to get it from our friends so that we're not, in any way, threatened.

But I'll tell you, Ron continues to sit there and talk about China. He has done expansions in China. His biggest donor that is backed by China gave them $340,000. So, don't go and talk about donors and money. Go to desantislies.com and we'll tell you all about it.

DESANTIS: Look, I know your record hurts. I know your record sometimes because you're being -- you're talking the opposite of what you did. You were made a big effort to bring them into the state.

They had land near military base. You were in front of the Chinese flags saying you work for them. You wrote a love letter to the ambassador. That's well-documented. You were the number one Republican governor in the country.

And even people that on the media who are hostile to me, they look, they say they can't find one instance of me as governor recruiting a Chinese company because I haven't done it. It's not been part of that.

HALEY: Desantislies.com is on there. It's on there.

DESANTIS: And the Enterprise Florida, we actually eliminated.

So, here's the thing though. She's backed by companies like BlackRock. She's backed by major companies on Wall Street. They make a lot of money in China. There's a reason why you're in the mess you are in terms of trying to deal with the inflation and everything because the elites in this country have sold out the middle of the country for China. She is part of that now. And she's not going to stand up for you.

BASH: I want to ask about something that you mentioned you've been talking a lot about on the campaign trail, which is decoupling the U.S. economy with China's. China is a top supplier of goods to the United States. The U.S. sells more than $150 billion of goods to China every year. Is it really possible to sever economic ties without inflicting major pain on American business and American consumers?

DESANTIS: Sure it is, and it's something that you've got to be strategic, you've got to be methodical about. You've got to focus on the things that are of national significance. For example, I don't think it's good idea that the pharmaceuticals come from there, things for our military weaponry, all these important things that if we got into a worldwide conflict, we're going to ask China, who may be on the other side of that, to continue doing that.

So, you got to be smart about it. You got to recognize that you're going to have to do some incentives here in this country, tax incentives, regulatory incentives. But I want to make things here again.

You know, I look around the country. There's parts of Iowa that have been hollowed out, particularly in the eastern part. And I've talked to folks and seen what that did for the community. We were sold a bill of goods by a lot of elites in this country that somehow putting China and the WTO and granting a most favorite nation status was going to lead to our manufacturing exporting a bunch of stuff there. Instead, they've gobbled up so much more manufacturing.

I don't think you can be a first rate power unless you have a very strong industrial base. So, we're going to do that here. We're going to work on workforce education. Not everyone needs to do a four-year Brick and Ivy University. That's not the best way or only way for people to succeed. We're going to do skilled trades. We're going to do vocational. We've done that in Florida. It's going to be a really, really big thing.

But I just think the middle of the country has to have those good- paying jobs and we can't put the interest of some of the people on Wall Street over the interests of Americans on Main Street.

TAPPER: Let's move on to Social Security. Let's move on to Social Security. According to the Social Security Administration, Social Security will be unable to pay full benefits in a decade if no action is taken.

Governor DeSantis, you have said that you're not going to, quote, mess with Social Security, unquote. Does that mean you have committed to never raising the retirement age and never cutting benefits?

DESANTIS: So, all seniors out there, promise has been made to you. You've paid into this. Every single paycheck that you've had your entire life they've taken money out of, and that promise needs to be fulfilled.

So, that will happen when I'm president. Of course, I have a lot of seniors in Florida that depend on Social Security. I know many of them. And I think back to my own grandmother who was -- lived until 91. Social Security was her sole source of income. So, promise made, promise kept.

You know, on the retirement age, you know, there used to be people would say, well, life expectancy is going up. Shouldn't it mirror that? Well, the problem now in the last five years is life expectancy is going down. So, I don't see how you can raise the retirement age when our life expectancy is collapsing in this country. That's a huge problem in and of itself.

I'll work with both sides of the aisle. We'll work on something for the long-term strengthening, but I am not going to mess with seniors' benefits. In this high-inflation environment, groceries are going through the roof, rent is going through the roof, all these staples, and you get a cost of living adjustment, but that's not enough to cover the costs that have been increased.

So, seniors are really strapped, particularly those that are on fixed income, and they have to know that we're going to deliver when it comes to their Social Security check.

Now, we're going to get inflation down. We're going to get energy costs down. There's going to be a lot of things that are going to help seniors, but I think seniors should know promise made will be a promise kept.

TAPPER: So just a point of clarification, 15 seconds, removing current seniors from the equation, you're not saying that you're committing to never raising the retirement age or cutting benefits.

DESANTIS: I would never raise the retirement age in the face of a declining life expectancy. I mean, I think that that would be really bad. I mean, just think about it, that hurts blue collar folks. You get taxed your entire life, life expectancy is down. You may not even be recouping very many benefits. And so life expectancy is declining. That's a big problem.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor. Governor Haley?

HALEY: Three years in a row, he voted to raise life expectancy to 70 years old, three years in a row. Go to desantislies.com and you'll see it. So, now suddenly he's going to tell you because he's running for president and he's not going to do it, you can't trust him.

What I'll tell you is Social Security is going to go bankrupt in ten years. Medicare is going to go bankrupt in eight. He talks about taking care of seniors right now, Florida is the inflation hotspot. It's the highest cost of living of any state in the country. Seniors are having to leave because they can't afford it. It's documented in desantislies.com.

What I'll tell you we have to do is we have to keep our promises to senior years, but we also can't put our head in the sand for those like Ron saying they're not going to touch Social Security. That means they're going to leave after four or eight years and leave it bankrupt. No.

What we do is we go to those in their 20s and say we're going to change the retirement age to reflect life expectancy. Instead of cost of living increases, we do increases based on inflation. We'd limit benefits on the wealthy and we expand Medicare advantage plans with seniors. That's how we'll deal with --

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

DESANTIS: With reducing the benefits, when you do the change in calculation, reducing the benefits, let's just put this in perspective, under her administration, you would have seniors getting less cost of living adjustments while your tax dollars are going to pay the pensions of Ukrainian bureaucrats.

HALEY: That's not true. That's such a lie, Ron.

DESANTIS: You talk about putting Americans last. That is wrong. You've supported all that money going over there. So, let's put our own people first.

HALEY: You're so desperate. You're just so desperate.

TAPPER: Governor Haley, let him speak.

DESANTIS: And she also said -- she said recently that the age of Social Security is way too low, and I criticized that. And then she was called on it. And then she said, she never said it, of course, you're lying. And then, sure enough, you put on the interview where she's there, splitting image, and she says it's way too low.

So, we can play this song and dance. She has a record. She makes statements. And I think part of the problem with her candidacy is now that she's getting scrutiny, she's got this problem with ballistic podiatry, shooting herself in the foot every other day, saying things that now she doesn't even take questions from people.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor DeSantis.

Governor Haley, you want to raise the retirement age for younger Americans, but you have not said what that age should be. Should voters in their 20s plan on working until they're 70?

HALEY: First of all, he hasn't answered the fact that he voted to raise the retirement age to 73 different times. He can call me whatever name and be demeaning as much as he wants. It doesn't change the fact that Ron is lying because Ron is losing. Everybody in the country sees it for what it is.

So, what I'll tell you is, yes, we're going to take on -- we're going to be responsible with it and we're going to go to those in our 20s.

When I said the retirement age was too low, again, where he's lying, it's because if you go, and you can go to desantislies.com, I said it's too low, if we're going to look at those in their 20s. We have to go and start looking at what we can do to get out of this. We want to make sure that everybody who was promised gets it.

But we also want to make sure our kids have something when they get it, too. So, the way we do that is exactly how I laid it out. Then we'll know what we're looking at and then we can start focusing.

The other thing is we need to start cutting spending in D.C. We have to go back to pre-COVID levels. That's why I'll veto any spending bill that doesn't take us back to pre-COVID levels. That will save us trillions. We've got to go into every agency, replace the head of every agency and send people into every agency.

I did that as governor. Pull down old regs, pull down old programs, get rid of any problem children and clean those agencies out and get them mission-focused. There is a lot of waste in D.C. You need an accountant to go in there and clean it up. But we're not going to take away from anyone else and he's yet to answer the fact that he voted three times to raise the retirement age.

TAPPER: Just a clarification, Governor Haley, in 15 seconds, should voters in their 20s plan on having to work until they're 70?

HALEY: They should plan on their retirement age being increased, yes. We're going to change it to reflect more of what life expectancy should be.

DESANTIS: Well, one of the things that I think we disagree on, too, is Governor Haley has said Social Security is an entitlement, but it's not an entitlement. You're paying into it. It's not a welfare program. You're being taxed for this your whole life. And so to expect to have benefits on the backend, I don't think that that's too much.

The other thing I'd point out is Social Security for decades ran massive surpluses. What happened to those surpluses? The Congress spent the surpluses.

HALEY: Yes, when you paid the debt.

DESANTIS: They have a big problem with that. So, number one, we need term limits for members of Congress. Number two, we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Number three, we need to give the president a line item veto. And, number four, when you see all these Congressmen making a killing in the stock market, like Nancy Pelosi, she could run a very lucrative hedge fund, we need a 28th Amendment to the Constitution that says very simply Congress shall make no law respecting the citizens of the United States that does not also apply to members of Congress themselves.

BASH: I want to turn now to the topic abortion, which, of course, has been hotly debated in this Republican primary campaign.

Governor Haley, last week Governor DeSantis said that former President Trump is not pro-life. Do you agree?

HALEY: I mean, look, I think that he did some pro-life things when he was president. You'd have to ask him. That's why he should be on this debate stage.

Don't ask me what President Trump thinks. You need to have him on this debate stage and ask him for yourself.

BASH: Governor DeSantis?

DESANTIS: Well, look, I think that we've stood very strongly for a culture of life. Governor Reynolds is here. She has stood strongly for a culture of life and a national life protection. We've done it in the state of Florida. Donald Trump has attacked that.

What they did under Governor Reynolds here in Iowa, he said that that's a, quote, terrible, terrible thing. I don't know how you square that. He was at the March for Life when he was president his last year and he said that life's a gift from God, that the unborn are made in the image of God and that you needed to have protections for that human life. And now saying it's a terrible, terrible thing, he's given a gift to the left to weaponize that against pro-lifers, and that's wrong.

But here's the thing. Republicans need to do a better job of lifting up folks who are having children. It's very difficult to raise kids in this environment. You need the help with medical care. You need the help with affordability, and we need the help with education, choice. You got to be pro-life for the whole life, and you got to have some compassion for what is going on in this country.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor. Thank you, Governor. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

BASH: Governor, yesterday in Iowa, you criticized Governor Haley on this issue of abortion. You said she's, quote, indulged in left wing tropes and chastised pro-lifers. Do you believe Governor Haley is sufficiently pro-life?

DESANTIS: I think she's been confused on the issue. I think she's trying to speak to different groups with different things. But when she says things like pro-lifers need to stop talking about throwing women in jail, that's a trope. No one I've ever met thinks that that's something that's appropriate. These women are in vulnerable situations. They don't get any help a lot of times from these fathers who don't want to be there supportive. A lot of times they don't have resources themselves.

So, it's a very difficult situation and we've got to have compassion for those situations. But I think when she starts bringing that in, that's using the language of the left to try to attack pro-lifers.

So, I think that that is wrong. But at the end of the day, I do agree with her on this. Donald Trump should be on this stage. He owes it to you here in Iowa to explain this change he's had in his positioning, to explain why he has a tough time saying whether a man can become a woman or not, to explain why he wants to build a billion dollar-plus big, beautiful, new FBI building right in the heart of the swamp in Washington, D.C. He needs to explain why he didn't build the wall and why he added $7.8 trillion to the debt.

Every candidate needs to earn your vote. Nobody is entitled to your vote. And he comes in here every now and then, he does his spiel, and then he leaves. I've shown up to all 99 counties because it's important. You're a servant of the people. You are not a ruler over the people. And that's the type of president that I will be for you.

BASH: Governor Haley, your response?

HALEY: I didn't hear the criticism from Ron about me for being pro- life, but I'm not surprised. It's something that he does all day, every day. I am unapologetically pro-life, not because the Republican Party tells me to be, but because my husband is adopted and I've got my two sweet children sitting in front of me and I had trouble having both of them.

These fellows don't know how to talk about abortion. I have said over and over again, the Democrats put fear in women on abortion and Republicans have used judgment. This is too personal of an issue to put fear or judgment.

Our goal should be how do we save as many babies as possible and support as many moms as possible. That's what we're going to focus on doing. We're not going to demonize this issue anymore. We're not going to play politics with this issue anymore. We're going to treat it like the respectful issue that it is.

And the tropes that you want to talk about, you keep saying, where is anybody talking about putting a woman in jail or giving her the death penalty? South Carolina. There is legislation right now that would put a woman in jail if she got an abortion. That's why I say that.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

So, I do want to remind the viewers at home, both governors have mentioned that they believe that Donald Trump should be here defending his own record. I just want to remind everybody that he did qualify for this debate and he did not accept our invitation.

Both of you talked about how important it is to protect the U.S. Constitution. Two years after losing the 2020 election, Donald Trump wrote on social media about his baseless election lies, quote, a massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution, unquote. On that subject, former Vice President Mike Pence has said that on January 6th, 2021, Donald Trump put himself over the Constitution.

Governor Haley, is there any meaningful difference in how you and Donald Trump view the Constitution?

HALEY: I mean, look, you take an oath to the Constitution, and I think what you're seeing is Donald Trump basically said that the election was stolen. He went on and on talking about the election being stolen.

He said that January 6th was a beautiful day. I think January 6th was a terrible day and we should never want to see that happen again.

And I think we have to always be strong on the fact that, look, we want fair elections and we saw some discrepancies in those elections in 2020 that should be concerning. That's why I passed voter I.D. in South Carolina. That's why I think when absentee ballots go out, you should be able to verify signatures. That's why I think ballots need to be counted on Election Day and you should get results on Election Day.

But that election, Trump lost it. Biden won that election. And the idea that he's gone and carried this out forever to the point that he's going to continue to say these things to scare the American people are wrong. We've seen a lot of states come together and do more election integrity bills. We need to do more than that. We still have three or four states that I'm worried about that don't have that.

But at the end of the day, I will always defend and fight for the Constitution. That's what we should do as Americans. I think what happened on January 6th was a terrible day and I think President Trump will have to answer for it.

TAPPER: So, just a clarification, Governor, is there any meaningful difference in how you and Donald Trump view the Constitution?

HALEY: Well, I mean, I think that he says in January 6th was a beautiful day. I don't think it was a beautiful day. I think you look at that. He thinks that he could go and bring in -- the fact that he wanted to change what the states did, the fact that he wanted to overturn the elections in D.C., those votes happen at the state level. You don't ever allow in D.C. for those votes to be changed at the federal level.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

HALEY: States rights matter.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

Governor DeSantis, is there any meaningful difference in how you and Donald Trump view the Constitution?

DESANTIS: My role model for how to do the Constitution is George Washington. He said, the Constitution is the guide that I will never abandon. And I remember when I took an oath to be an officer in the U.S. Navy. You raise that hand, you put that left hand on the Bible. And it's interesting, the oath doesn't say that you're going to defend the shores of the United States or engage in military conflict.

The oath simply says that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. As President of the United States, you will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. You can't just terminate the Constitution. I mean, I know he does word vomit from time to time on social media, but, obviously, I will uphold the Constitution.

And I think it's fine to criticize Donald Trump, and I know the media brings it up a lot. But you know who else deserves to be criticized? The people that violated the Constitution during COVID to lock people out of schools, to destroy businesses, to force masks on people, to try to force vaccines. I'm going to bring a reckoning to all these agencies, the CDC, the NIH, the FDA, they harm people in this country. And when Dr. Fauci said there was no learning loss for kids, that's a disgrace.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

DESANTIS: There's a reckoning coming.

TAPPER: So, let's talk about how you view the powers of the presidency because your opponent, Donald Trump, was in court yesterday for a hearing on presidential immunity. And, Governor DeSantis, I'm wondering if you agree with the argument that Donald Trump's lawyer made in court that a president should have immunity for any conduct in office, including, as the judge asked, ordering the assassination of a political rival unless the president gets impeached and convicted by the Senate for the offense first.

DESANTIS: Well, obviously, that attorney gave the case away on that explanation. I think the D.C. Circuit is going to rule against Donald Trump on that issue. I'm not exactly sure what the outer limits are. I don't think it's necessarily been litigated. It's not going to be an issue with me, because I'm always going to follow the Constitution. And we're going to uphold the best traditions of the office. And I'm going to be a president you can be proud of.

I think it's important that people would be able to look to the president and say, hey, that's somebody that's worthy of emulating. And so my wife and I, we just view ourselves to try to do well for our kids and to make sure they're proud of us. And we set a good example. So, that's what we would do in that situation.

But I think there's a larger issue Republicans have got to think of. Donald Trump is going to lose that appeal. He's going to end up going to trial in front of a stacked left-wing D.C. jury of all Democrats. What are the odds that he's going to get through that? And that's even talking about the validity of the charges. I don't think he gets through that.

And so what are we going to do as Republicans in terms of who we nominate for president? If Trump is the nominee, it's going to be about January 6th, legal issues, criminal trials. The Democrats and the media would love to run with that.

I'm not running for my issues. I'm running for your issues. We need to make this election a referendum on the failures of Joe Biden, the failures of the Democratic Party, and how we have the formula to engineer a great comeback for this country. That's what I would do.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor. Governor Haley, Governor Haley, your response?

HALEY: I'm sorry, I didn't hear the question.

TAPPER: The question was, do you agree with the argument Donald Trump's lawyer made in court that a president should have immunity for any conduct, including ordering the assassination of a political rival unless that president is impeached and convicted by Senate for the defense first?

HALEY: No, that's ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous. I mean, we need to use some common sense here. You can't go and kill a political rival and then claim, you know, immunity from a President. I think we have to start doing things that are right. And you know,

Ron said we should have leaders that we can look up to. Well, then stop lying because nobody's going to want to look up to you if you're lying.

But what I do think we need to look at is what is what has President Trump done? You look at the last few years and our country is completely divided. It's divided over extremes. It's divided over hatred, it's divided over the fact that people think that if someone doesn't agree with you that they're bad.

And now we have leaders in our country that decide who's good and who's bad, who's right and who's wrong. That's not what a leader does. What a leader does is they bring out the best in people and get them to see the way forward.

That's what we need in our country. We don't need this chaos anymore. We need someone who's going to be a new generational leader that brings sanity back to America.

TAPPER: Thank you so much. We'll see you then. Republican Presidential Debate live from Drake University. We'll be back right after this.

[commercial break]

BASH: Welcome back to the CNN Presidential Debate live from Iowa, Drake University. Let's start this with health care. Neither of you has released a detailed healthcare plan so we want to give some -- the voters here some insight into specifics of what you might do as President.

Governor Haley, as governor of South Carolina you chose not to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. Forty states including this one where we are in Iowa did expand Medicaid covering more than 18 million Americans. As President, would you allow those states to keep their expansions in place?

HALEY: Well, the first thing is we have to look at the fact that how can we be the best country in the world with the most expensive health care in the world? And so the way we're going to deal with it is we're going to open it all up from the hospitals to the insurance companies to the doctor's offices to the pharmaceuticals to the PBMs, make them have to show us everything.

Because right now, I can tell you, we take care of my parents. They're 87 and 90. My dad is in the hospital right now. When my mom was in the hospital, a nurse came up to her to give her a couple of Tylenol. And she said, I don't need them. And she said, honey, you might as well take them, because you're going to pay for them anyway. When we got the bill from the hospital, no one talked to us about that.

Right now, you have insurance companies and hospitals deciding what it is for us. We're going to take the patient out of the back seat and put them in the driver's seat. We're going to make sure that just like when you get your car fixed, and you go and they say, we can give you a temporary fix, and it'll cost this much money, or we can give you a permanent fix, and it's going to cost that much money. We're going to go and make it transparent so that we can see everything so that they have to show us their words.

The second thing is we're going to pass Tort Reform around this country. I did that in South Carolina. Doctors don't give you those 10 tests because they want to. It's for the 90 percent chance they'll get sued. And then we're going to go and eliminate Certificate of Need in this country. I did that in South Carolina, as well. That basically says if you have a hospital here, you can't have another hospital for X number of miles.

They do the same thing for surgical centers, for nursing homes. We're going to put competition back in health care so that health care is fighting for the patient. That way, services go up and costs go down.

BASH: Thank you, Governor Haley, just a 15-second point of clarification. Would you allow the states that accepted Medicaid expansion to keep that?

HALEY: So, the problem with Medicaid is, it needs to be sent down as block grants. Governors can best decide how to do that. Whether they need to use it towards mental health, whether they need to use it towards support services.

Right now, I would send all of that down to the states. The problem is they're only sending a small portion of it. They need to send more of that so that states can better take care of it.

BASH: Thank you, Governor Haley. Governor DeSantis, your response on whether you would allow Iowa and the other 39 states who accepted Medicaid expansion to keep it.

DESANTIS: Well, I've spoken with a lot of folks here in Iowa, and we need health care that's accessible, that's affordable, and that's accountable. And particularly an emphasis on mental health. In every corner of this state, everywhere I've traveled in the campaign, people are really concerned about mental health with the kids in schools, people that are coming out of service to our country, with veterans, we're going to put a big emphasis on mental health.

I've actually delivered on some of these things in Florida. We got accountability for the pharmacy benefit middlemen that are causing your drug prices to go up. So, we have transparency and consumers pay less. And I just beat the federal government to allow the state of Florida to buy prescription drugs from Canada, which is 25 cents on the dollar. What are prescription drugs cost? I want seniors to be able to do.

And then finally, we need to upend this COVID and medical authoritarian regime that we saw going around this country during COVID. It's wrong to force vaxes like the COVID shot and say people are going to lose their jobs. That is not going to ever happen on my watch, trust me.

BASH: Governor DeSantis, same. Fifteen-second clarification.

DESANTIS: I think what you do is you block-grant the program and then let states run the way they see fit to do. But I can tell you this, expanding Medicaid leads to less private coverage. It doesn't necessarily increase access to quality care. I want to actually get people good health care. It's not just about a sheet of paper if you don't get any good doctors that get you entitled for that.

BASH: Thank you, Governor. Governor DeSantis mentioned mental health. Let's talk about that. There is a mental health crisis in this country. An estimated 58 million Americans suffer from some type of mental health illness. Governor Haley, you say the mental health crisis is a quote, "cancer that no one has dealt with". What do you think is causing the crisis and what would you do to fix it?

HALEY: Well, I think we saw it exacerbated by COVID. I mean with the school lockdowns and everything else we see young people now with more anxiety, stress and depression than ever before. One in three people right now suffer from mental health issues, but if treated, they can live a perfectly normal life.

The problem is we don't have enough mental health therapists. We don't have enough mental health treatment centers. We don't have enough addiction centers. And if you happen to be lucky enough to get one of those three, insurance doesn't cover it.

We have got to start dealing with this, because it's become a huge issue. And that's why we need to have more Telehealth, so that people can get the mental health care they need right when they need it. We need to have mental health counselors in schools so they can identify when a child has a problem that they can get the help that they need. But right now, we've got to get access to care. And that's, again, why I want to move those federal programs down to the state level, because states know they need more mental health support.

They're not getting the dollars to do it. We don't need D.C. bureaucrats handling that. We need this on the ground so that we can get the mental health centers, get the therapists, and get the help that people need so that they can be healthy again.

BASH: Governor DeSantis, you said right here in Iowa this summer that closing mental health institutions, a policy supported by Ronald Reagan, was a mistake. As President, would you restore federal funding to those mental health institutions?

DESANTIS: Yes, we need more people in institutionalized settings, unfortunately. But, you know, Governor Haley mentioned, I think, correctly, the devastating mental health consequences for these school closures, a lot of things that happened during COVID, I never recalled seeing her out there fighting the fight. I was on the front lines on that. Governor Kim Reynolds was on the front lines on that.

We fought back against the biomedical state. We were attacked by the media. We were attacked by the pharmaceutical companies. We were attacked by the left, attacked by Fauci. We stood and we helped people. And Iowa and Florida had the best schools opening in the entire pandemic because we led. That's what you want to do.

Now, in terms of mental health, I've run into veterans here in Iowa, and I think we have a significant problem with veterans, particularly the post-9-11 veterans, and we know the stats on suicide. It's really, really sad. And as a fellow veteran, as President, I have to put that issue on the front burner.

We can't keep turning a blind eye to what's happening to our vets. It's not going to be done just through the VA. And it can't be done just by pumping people with pharmaceuticals. If a veteran has post- traumatic stress, you need more than just that. So, we're going to use the VA to link veterans with resources that are throughout our country.

For example, in Florida, we have an organization that trains service dogs to be able to be paired with veterans with post-traumatic stress. They understand the symptoms, they mitigate it, and you know what? The suicide rate is close to zero as a result of that. We got to think bigger than these bureaucracies, and we've got to be there for our vets and their mental health.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor. Turning -- turning to the topic of climate, 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded on Earth, and Americans are already feeling the impact. Just yesterday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the U.S. experienced 28 weather and climate-related disasters that cost at least $1 billion last year -- another record.

Governor DeSantis, here in Florida. I'm sorry, Governor DeSantis, here in Iowa, massive flooding has left farmers underwater. In Florida, rising seas threaten coastal cities. You have taken action in your home state to mitigate the problems of rising seas. But as President, would you do anything to deal with the underlying cause, which scientists agree requires cutting carbon emissions?

DESANTIS: So, on day one as President, we take Biden's Green New Deal. We tear it up and we throw it in the trash can. It is bad for this country. We have to have reliable energy. And here's the thing, you know, they talk about -- Joe Biden has said that global warming is worse than a nuclear war. And I'm just thinking to myself, well, gee, John Kerry hasn't given up his private jet. Obama hasn't given up his Martha's Vineyard seaside mansion. I haven't seen Biden do anything to hold China accountable except making sure that Hunter gets his money.

So, these guys talk out of one side of their mouth and then they behave in another way. And I think that's wrong. But I also think that those policies would devastate communities, particularly here in Iowa. I mean, for example, he wants to mandate electric vehicles. That's going to be more costly.

I think the car companies would go bankrupt, but it's going to hurt liquid fuels, which is very, very important. You're going to end up having rolling blackouts if they kneecap reliable energy production in this country. Florida's had a massive decline in emissions -- wasn't because of a single mandate.

It was because of innovation, because a lot of natural gas has replaced coal. We do have market-based solar, and it's a compliment, but we cannot walk away from reliable energy. And I think about, here's what the left wants to do. They want to take away your freedom, and they want you to pay more for everything.

We need you to pay less for energy. And we need to make sure people can innovate. We cannot have these mandates and they'll be gone the day I'm President.

TAPPER: So, Governor, just a point of clarification -- 15 seconds. A recent research at the University of Iowa ties these floods in Iowa to the rise in greenhouse gases.

DESANTIS: And here's the thing, Jake, I appreciate that.

TAPPER: Let me just ask the question. As President, would you do anything to deal with this underlying cause?

DESANTIS: Innovate, and here's the thing. China is building two coal plants a week. You can do everything Biden wants to do and you're going to have way more of what China's increasing it. So, why would we be cutting off our nose to spite our face? China is the problem here, and so hold them accountable.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor.

DESANTIS: But don't hold the American people to less opportunity.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor. Governor Haley, as President, would you do anything to deal with the underlying cause of the floods and other climate disasters, which scientists agree requires cutting carbon emissions?

HALEY: I mean, first of all, regardless of what party, everybody wants to have clean air, clean water. They want a world that they can pass on to their kids that's going to be healthy and all of that. But it's how do we do that? I think the first thing we have to understand is you don't deal in extremes.

When I was at the United Nations, the reason I took us out of the Paris climate agreement was because President Obama had put all these mandates down on our businesses, but they didn't do anything to hold China and India to account. Those are the two countries we have to really go to if we care about the environment, that we go and make them be held accountable.

The second thing is we'll roll back all of Biden's green subsidies because they're misplaced. Rather than putting anything towards innovation on what we can do on nuclear fusion and other things that reduce emissions, which there are things out there, to go and have everybody have to drive an electric car by 2035. That's not even smart. One, because which, by the way, Ron took Biden's stimulus money and did charging stations all throughout Florida. I wouldn't have taken the stimulus money. But what that does is basically, we don't have the infrastructure. And I'm not just talking about charging stations. Electric vehicles are heavy. Our roads and bridges wouldn't be able to handle that if we did that because they're heavy in weight.

And so we have to be smart about the way we do that. Not to mention 70 percent of the batteries in electric cars are made in China. So, Biden gave this massive windfall to our number one national security threat. If we're going to do it, innovate it, transition and do it the right way, not in extremes.

BASH: Thank you. I want to turn to the issue of crime. The majority of Americans describe crime in the U.S. as either extremely or very serious. Recent data show crime rates falling, but some violent crime rates do remain high. Governor Haley, former President Trump, suggested that he might try to stop violent crime by deploying U.S. troops to democratic-run states and cities, something he could potentially do under the Insurrection Act. Is that something that you would do as President?

HALEY: What I would do is, first of all, defund sanctuary cities. It's hugely important that we do that. That's where we're seeing a lot of crime. But the second thing is, our law enforcement is demoralized right now. Because if they go and they arrest someone for having a stolen gun, it's demoralizing when they go through all that effort, put their lives at risk, and then you turn around and let that criminal go the very next day.

Prosecutors need to prosecute according to the law and we've got to start holding them accountable. When we bring law and order back to our cities, then that's when they'll be safe. You don't do it by defunding the police, and you don't do it by just praising the police.

You do it by having their backs, making sure we pass the first Body Camera Bill in the country in South Carolina, to make sure that law enforcement felt like they could do their job without anyone -- without feeling threatened about them doing their job.

But we have to have prosecutors prosecuting. We have to defund sanctuary cities. We have to get these stolen guns and drugs off the street. And the only way we can do that is when we empower law enforcement.

BASH: Governor DeSantis.

DESANTIS: I just think, I mean, that quote from the President, former president Trump is a little bit rich because he was President during the worst rioting in the modern history of this country, the BLM riots in the summer of 2020. When I saw that happening in Minneapolis, in Florida, I called out the National Guard. We had state law enforcement deployed.

We said, you're not burning down our cities in this state. And you know what? It didn't happen. He sat in the White House and tweeted law and order, but he did nothing to ensure law and order. As your President, I will never let our cities burn. You have every right to stop this runaway rioting as President. In fact, you have a duty.

Now, Nikki Haley and I have a disagreement on the BLM stuff, too, because she tweeted during this period of time that the death of George Floyd should be, quote, "personal and painful for each and every American".

But people in Iowa had nothing to do with that, or Florida or South Carolina, she was virtue signaling to the left, she was accepting the narrative, and she was trying to impress people who were never going to like us.

I never bought in to going after the police, we backed the Blue to the state of Florida, and we're about lower crime as a result of that.

BASH: Thank you. Governor Haley.

HALEY: It's interesting that he did that. He put a tweet that was very similar.

DESANTIS: That's not true.

HALEY: But let me tell you why I did that. First of all, we had one of the worst racial shootings. We had the shooting of Walter Scott who was shot seven times in the back by a dirty cop. We had a horrific shooting at a church where a white supremacist came in and killed nine amazing souls.

BLM, all of that, we never had to deal with riots. We never had to call in the National Guard, Ron, because when we had both of those shootings, we were able to pull people together. We didn't have riots, we had vigils. We didn't have protests, we had prayer. We brought people together.

When I said that about George Floyd, when we turned around and had the worst shooting in a religious place that we had seen in this country, not only did I pass the first Body Camera Bill in the country and keep our state together, not only did I move to bring the Confederate flag down, we came together as a state in prayer --

TAPPER: Thank you Governor.

HALEY: -- and we had no division, no riots, no anything.

TAPPER: Thank you.

HALEY: We didn't need the National Guard because a leader knows how to bring out the best of the people.

TAPPER: Thank you, Governor. So, you have been sparring on the campaign trail for months. We've seen some vicious attack ads going back and forth, and tonight we have had a very lively debate. On a different note, Governor DeSantis, let me ask you, what do you admire about Governor Haley?

DESANTIS: Well, look, I mean, I think that, you know, at the United Nations, I did think that she spoke out strongly on some key issues, and I appreciated that. I also appreciate the state of South Carolina. My wife is a College of Charleston graduate. Her parents lived there for many, many years.

And so, it is a wonderful state. There's a lot of great people there. And I think to be able to have been Governor there is a great achievement. And I really appreciate everyone I've gotten to meet in South Carolina.

TAPPER: Governor Haley, what do you admire about Governor DeSantis?

HALEY: I think he's been a good governor.

TAPPER: Okay. So, we're going to squeeze in another quick break. And we'll be right back with more from the Republican debates here at Drake University.

[commercial break]

BASH: We're back live from Des Moines, Iowa in the CNN Republican Presidential Debate. We now have time for closing statements and we begin with Governor Haley.

HALEY: First of all, I want to thank the good people of Iowa. I have campaigned for 11 months, whether it's driving a combine or holding a pig at a produce area or whether it's the fact that we've met owners of bakeries and small businesses.

You know, every one of them knows that we can't go through four more years of chaos. And if it's Donald Trump, there will be four more years of chaos. And we can't be a country in disarray in a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. And we can't go through another nail-biter of an election.

And if you look at the polls right now, going against Joe Biden, in every one of those head-to-head polls, Ron doesn't beat Joe Biden. Trump is head-to-head. On a good day, he might be up by two points. I defeat Biden by 17 points. That's bigger than the presidency.

That's House, that's Senate, that's governorships, that's down to school board. That's a mandate to get our spending under control and get inflation down. That's a mandate to get our kids reading again and go back to the basics in education. That's a mandate to secure our borders with no more excuses. That's a mandate to bring law and order back to our country and that's a mandate for a strong America that we can be proud of.

We can do this. I know we can do this. If you will join with me in this movement, if you join with me in this fight, I promise you our best days are to come. God bless you.

BASH: Governor DeSantis.

DESANTIS: Well, it's been great to visit all 99 counties here in Iowa. I've been able to meet so many friends and really learn about some of the best of America. Iowa's votes do not need to be corrected by any other state. You all know what you're doing. And we have an opportunity on Monday to really change the course of history.

Donald Trump's running for his issues. Nikki Haley's running for her donors' issues. I'm running for your issues, your family's issues, and solely to turn this country around. I'm the only one running that's delivered on 100 percent of my promises. And I'm the only one running that has beaten the left time and time again, from the teachers' unions, to Fauci, to the Democratic Party.

We need to run under the banner of bold colors that are putting the American people first. We can't run under a banner of pale pastels of the warmed-over corporatism, the likes of which is practiced by Nikki Haley. Freedom is on the ballot. Decline is a choice. We have it within our power to fix this country and to turn it around.

I am asking for your support in the Iowa caucus on Monday, January 15th. I'll be a President that you can be proud of and I promise you this, I will get the job done and I will not let you down. Thank you and God bless you all.

TAPPER: Our thanks to Governor DeSantis and Governor Haley. Governor DeSantis and Governor Haley, thank you so much both of you for being here tonight. Thanks to our audience, to our host, Drake University. For Dana Bash and the whole CNN team, I'm Jake Tapper. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to join us Monday, January 15th at 4 P.M. Eastern for CNN's coverage of the Iowa caucuses. Anderson Cooper and Kaitlan Collins are going to pick it up right now with more on the debate. See you tomorrow.

Presidential Candidate Debates, Republican Candidates Debate in Des Moines, Iowa Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/369118

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