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[Poll] What changed after Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis debated one-on-one?

By: The Horn editorial team

Presidential hopefuls Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley sparred last night in a one-on-one debate, with frontrunning candidate Donald Trump skipping the debate for a town hall.

Standing at lecterns an arm’s length apart, DeSantis and Haley fired off detailed critiques and sarcastic quips from the beginning.

Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, opened the debate by touting a new website to track DeSantis’ “lies.”

Gov. DeSantis of Florida slammed Haley for taking money from deep-pocketed donors.

“Under her administration, you would have seniors getting less in cost-of-living adjustments, while your tax dollars are going to pay the pensions of Ukrainian bureaucrats,” DeSantis alleged. “You talked about putting Americans last. You supported all that money.”

“That’s not true. That’s such a lie,” Haley interrupted. “You’re so desperate. You’re just so desperate.”

The Florida governor in turn said Haley’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 [about].”

Haley rolled her eyes.

Take a look —

In one of her most brutal critiques, Haley ridiculed DeSantis for the turmoil within his political operation, with several rounds of personnel changes and new strategies along with the millions spent on his behalf.

“Why should we think you can manage or do anything in this country?” Haley asked.

DeSantis accused Haley of being beholden to big donors and of flip-flopping on conservative issues.

“We don’t need another mealy-mouthed politician who just tells you what she thinks you want to hear just to try to get your vote, then to get into office and to do her donors’ bidding,” DeSantis said of Haley.

Haley continued to needle DeSantis on how he ran his campaign, saying it showed he couldn’t be trusted to run the country if he could spend $150 million and have so much internal chaos and stagnant polling. When the Florida governor tried to interrupt her, Haley said, “I think I hit a nerve.”

DeSantis dismissed Haley’s criticism as “process stuff” that voters don’t care about and bragged about his conservative record in Florida while jabbing her for failing to pass school choice as governor.

Haley responded by touting her record as governor.

“We [in South Carolina] were named the beasts of the Southeast. We moved an 11 percent unemployment rate down to 4 percent,” Haley said.

“We did e-verify in the first six months, not five years like Ron. So, don’t pick go and pick on school choice and say that that’s leadership. When I got to the U.N., we took $1 billion off the top.”

 

The central role the U.S. is playing in the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war emerged as a clear dividing line between Haley and DeSantis.

DeSantis charged that she was more concerned about the Ukrainian border than the southern border of the United States.

“You can take the ambassador out of the United Nations, but you can’t take the United Nations out of the ambassador,” DeSantis jabbed.

Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, offered a passionate defense of sending aid to Ukraine and Israel.

“This is about preventing war,” she said. “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.”

One rare point of agreement was that Trump should have been onstage too.

“I wish Donald Trump was up here on this stage. He’s the one that I’m running against. He needs to be defending his record,” Haley said.

“Right now, he’s not defending the fact that he allowed us to have $8 trillion over four years that our kids are never going to forgive us for, the fact that he didn’t deal with China… the fact they’ve gone and continued to put up Chinese police stations… 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.”

DeSantis added, “He said he was gonna build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. He did not deliver that.”

The Florida governor also hammered Trump for his legal woes. DeSantis doubted Trump’s ability to remain a viable candidate during his several lawsuits. “Donald Trump’s going to lose that appeal,” he said.

 

During the debate, former President Donald Trump was speaking at a town hall, and he announced that he’d decided his running mate.

Trump has skipped all the GOP’s primary debates. President Joe Biden, as the incumbent president, is not participating in debates, either.

We want to hear from you — who won? Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis… or did Trump win by not showing up?

Who won the Republican debate on Wednesday?

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The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contribtued to this article.