Five Republican presidential contenders ― Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Senator Tim Scott entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ― gathered onstage in Miami for the party’s third debate of the primary season on Wednesday night.
The smaller group than in previous debates gave each of the candidates more airtime, but the absence of former President Donald Trump, the polling front-runner who has refused to participate in the debates, continued to be glaring.
With the Republican Iowa caucuses just 2½ months away and Trump’s runaway polling lead seemingly insurmountable, however, President Joe Biden has clearly stopped paying close attention.
The debate, hosted by NBC News with an assist from conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and Matthew Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, was heavy on foreign policy, especially how to deal with the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars. And Ramaswamy, as combative as ever, likely emerged as a bigger punching bag for his rivals than the Democrat occupying the White House.
Here are five takeaways.
Joe Biden Is Squarely Focused On Trump – Not The Debate Participants
Most poll watchers believe that Trump, the front-runner in polls who has skipped the Republican primary debates, is virtually unstoppable in his bid to get the Republican presidential nomination. That has diminished public interest in the debates thus far in which he has refused to participate.
Biden evidently agrees. Biden’s re-election campaign issued nine press releases blasting Republicans on Wednesday. Two of them were directed exclusively at the Republican debaters. Three were directed at Trump and the debaters, though none named a single one of the Republican candidates.
Instead, the Biden campaign mostly treated the Republicans participating in the debate as an afterthought, issuing four press releases targeting Trump exclusively. Some of the statements made it apparent that the campaign was focused on countering Trump’s rally in Hialeah, Florida, rather than anything said on the debate stage.
Shortly after 6 p.m. Eastern time, a Biden campaign release declared: “Trump’s Abortion Agenda Cost Republicans Last Night and Will Cost Trump in 2024.”
At about 8:45 p.m., the Biden release said, “Donald Trump Is No Real Ally of Cuban Americans.”
A few minutes later, the campaign added: “Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban is Racist and Un-American.”
And as the clock approached 9:30 p.m., Biden’s team noted in a statement that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, despite his claims to the contrary.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Biden campaign used the occasion of Trump’s rally and the GOP debate to announce two new Spanish-language TV ads targeting South Florida’s Latino voters. One ad highlights Biden’s firm stance against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro; the other focuses more on Biden’s management of the economy.
Republicans Did Not Pile On Against Biden – or Trump
Neither the man they hope to replace as president nor the man they all trail by double-digits in primary polling was the subject of extended discussion on the debate stage, with the candidates more focused on their rivalries with ― or outright hatred of ― each other.
That’s especially true of Haley and Ramaswamy, whose sniping at one another ― and about various foreign leaders ― reached new heights on Wednesday.
Commenting on the stalemate in the Russia-Ukraine war, Ramaswamy declared himself vindicated for supporting an end to U.S. military aid for Ukraine months ago as he pilloried Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ukraine “has threatened not to hold elections this year unless the U.S. forks over more money. That is not democratic,” he said. “It has celebrated a Nazi, in its own ranks ― the comedian in cargo pants, a man called Zelenskyy.”
Haley, who had already been sparring with Ramaswamy, predicted that electing Ramaswamy would please U.S. adversaries.
“I’m telling you, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] are salivating at the thought that someone like that could become president,” she said.
Neither Trump nor Biden got off scot-free. The candidates attacked Biden for being soft on Iran, for restricting fossil fuel extraction, for his alleged corruption.
“Joe Biden sold off our foreign policy,” Ramaswamy said. “Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden got a $5 million bribe from Ukraine.”
DeSantis opened the night by swiping at Trump, blaming him for the weak Republican Party performance in a host of elections on Tuesday night. But for large swaths of the debate, it was like the candidates forgot they were 30 percentage points behind a man who wasn’t even on the stage.
Not The Vibe: Anti-Youth Sentiments Were On Display
Biden, the country’s oldest ever president at 81, is doing shockingly badly with young voters compared to 2020, according to recent polls. But if Republicans wanted to capitalise on this weakness, they didn’t show it during the debate, championing positions that could alienate the youngest voting blocs.
On the subject of TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app enormously popular with young people, the candidates were in agreement that it poses a threat to the personal data of users. Christie, DeSantis and Scott appeared to be in favor of restricting the app, which is already banned on phones used by employees of Congress and the White House.
None of the candidates besides Ramaswamy, who is 38 and uses the app to reach a younger audience for his campaign, admitted to actually being on TikTok. And none of them besides Ramaswamy is even close in age to the app’s core demographic of 18-to 34-year-olds.
Lawmakers have raised concerns about TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech giant Byte Dance and has more than a billion users. But they can’t seem to articulate an exact problem with TikTok beyond the app being owned by a Chinese corporation. According to many reports, TikTok collects the same type of data from users as any other app.
“TikTok is not only spyware, it is polluting the minds of American young people all throughout this country, and they’re doing it intentionally,” said Christie, who is 61 and apparently not on TikTok.
“It is not that Israel needs America. America needs Israel.”
- Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador
“The next generation of Americans are using it,” Ramaswamy said, after pointing out that Haley’s adult daughter is on the app. He said the problem isn’t TikTok necessarily but stopping U.S. companies from “turning over data to Chinese companies.”
The candidates also stoked the generational divide by calling for an increase in the Social Security eligibility age for people who are now 20 to 40 years old, to avoid the retirement program running dry. It’s a common argument for addressing the system’s impending financial collapse, but it undercuts the fact that not every segment of the population is living longer.
Younger generations also don’t have as much of a retirement cushion as their parents, who often benefited from employer-funded pensions.
Haley, 51, said that people who had been promised retirement benefits at a certain age should get to retire then. The current age to collect full Social Security benefits is 67 for people born in 1960 and later.
She also called for limiting Social Security for wealthy Americans who have nonetheless paid into the system.
“What we need to do is keep our promises — those that have been promised should keep it, but for my kids in their 20s, you go in, you say we’re going to change the rule,” Haley said.
DeSantis and Scott both balked at the idea of raising the eligibility age, citing the prevalence of physically demanding jobs and shorter lifespans for large swaths of the population.
“If you’re actually going to change this tire, the way you do this is not by picking on seniors who have paid into a program that deserve their money coming back out to them,” Scott, 58, said.
Republicans Really, Really Want You To Know How Much They Love Israel And Hate Iran
The first hour of the debate focused on foreign policy. And since it is the first debate following the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas and then Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza, the candidates were lining up to demonstrate not only their support for Israel but also their opposition to the Biden administration’s gentle admonishments that Israel should do more to protect Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, including through a humanitarian pause.
“The last thing we need to do is to tell Israel what to do. The only thing we should be doing is supporting them and eliminating Hamas,” Haley said. “It is not that Israel needs America. America needs Israel. They are the tip of the spear when it comes to this Islamic terrorism, and we need to make sure that we have their backs in that process.”
Asked by Brooks, of Republican Jewish Coalition, whether the candidates would commit to striking Iran, given its role as a sponsor of Hamas and Shia militias firing projectiles at U.S. aircraft carriers, Haley replied in the affirmative and criticized Biden for merely retaliating with a tit-for-tat.
“We need to go and take out their infrastructure that they are using to make those strikes with so they can never do it again,” she said. “Iran responds to strength. You punch them once and you punch them hard, and they will back off.”
DeSantis took a slightly more measured approach. Referring to U.S. troops on two aircraft carriers that the U.S. has deployed in the region as a deterrent against Iran, DeSantis said, “Biden has them out there. They’re sitting ducks. He’s doing glancing blows. That’s just inviting more attacks from the Iranians. I would say, ‘You harm a hair on the head of an American service member and you are going to have hell to pay.’”
Brooks, who was granted two questions, then asked how the candidates would respond to growing antisemitism on college campuses.
DeSantis touted his efforts to shut down chapters of the Students for Justice in Palestine group at public Florida universities ― a move that civil liberties groups have decried as unconstitutional.
“I want to be careful to avoid making the mistakes from the neocon establishment of the past.”
- Vivek Ramaswamy, entrepreneur
Scott promised to take away federal funding for any institution of higher learning that “allows for antisemitism and hate, to allow students to encourage terrorism, mass murder and genocide.”
Scott and DeSantis both promised to deport foreign student visa holders who express sympathies for Hamas or the kind of murder of innocent civilians that it perpetrated on October 7.
DeSantis even blasted Biden for trying to address Islamophobia, which he suggested is not a problem at all.
“He is launching an initiative to combat so-called Islamophobia,” he said. “No, it’s the antisemitism. It’s spiraling out of control. That is what we have to confront.”
Ramaswamy was something of an outlier on the question of U.S. policy in the Middle East and its domestic implications. He broke with his rivals on the debate stage on the question of restricting even extreme pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses, which he characterized as a slippery slope to virtually limitless censorship.
“We don’t quash this with censorship because that creates a worse underbelly,” he said. “We quell it through leadership by calling it out.”
He also reiterated his view that although Israel has the right to defend itself, the U.S. should work toward phasing out military aid. He has repeatedly expressed concern that the United States’ alliance with Israel could be pulling it into an unnecessary conflict with Iran.
“I want to be careful to avoid making the mistakes from the neocon establishment of the past,” he said, using a nickname for the interventionist “neoconservative” wing of the Republican Party. “Corrupt politicians in both parties spent trillions, killed millions, made billions for themselves in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting wars that sent thousands of our sons and daughters ― people my age ― to die in wars that did not advance anyone’s interests.”
Ramaswamy Isn’t Making Any Friends
Debates are not for winning over your opponents. But Ramaswamy, more than other candidates, seems to be actively making enemies.
One of the bitterest exchanges of the night came after Ramaswamy brought up Haley’s daughter, noting she uses TikTok. “You’re just scum,” Haley, who is normally more collected on stage, barked back.
Ramaswamy also attacked one of the moderators and made fun of DeSantis for allegedly wearing lifts inside his cowboy boots.
It’s not the first time that Ramaswamy has rubbed people the wrong way. He’s been called “annoying” and “obnoxious,” which pundits have attributed to his relative youth, confidence — and habit of talking with an index finger waving in the air. And as many have pointed out, it’s not unlike the self-assuredness that created friction in 2020 between Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and now-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was roughly Ramaswamy’s age when he was running in the Democratic presidential primary.
If anything, Ramaswamy’s pugnaciousness seems to be what’s fueled his rise. After voters got to see him in action at the first debate, his poll numbers shot up. But Ramaswamy seems to have reached his ceiling two months out from the first nominating contest. For his fans who hoped to see him run away with the Republican nomination, a podcast will have to suffice.