GOP presidential hopefuls Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are back on the debate stage Monday night to appeal to voters just five days before the Iowa caucuses.
Former President Donald Trump was the only other primary candidate to meet the 10% polling benchmark to qualify for the debate, but as with the previous four debates, he declined to participate. Instead, Trump will appear on a Fox News town hall in Iowa at the same time.
CNN is hosting the debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, starting at 9 p.m. EST. CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are moderating the debate.
Neither former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie nor entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy qualified for the debate, and Christie formally withdrew from the race Wednesday, just hours before the debate was to begin.
“It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination,” Christie said during an event Wednesday in Windham, New Hampshire.
Though Ramaswamy won’t be on the stage, viewers of the debate will reportedly have the opportunity to see him in a paid ad during the program.
Fox News exclusively reported Wednesday that Ramaswamy will run a campaign ad during the debate telling viewers to “turn this s— off” and accusing the “mainstream media” of “trying to rig the Iowa GOP caucus in favor of the corporate candidates who they can control.”
Ramaswamy also hosted a town hall live Wednesday night with podcast host Tim Pool.
Trump continues to hold a sizable lead in the polls, with Haley and DeSantis trading places for second or third place, depending upon the poll.
The following are highlights from the final debate before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15.
America must end all “normal trade relations with China,” Haley said, until fentanyl stops flowing from China to the drug cartels who smuggle it to America.
Haley claimed that Trump “didn’t deal with China when it came to stealing intellectual property, the fact they gave us [COVID-19], the fact that they have gone and continued to put up Chinese police stations and continue to threaten our military.”
DeSantis fired back, saying, “When Nikki Haley was governor of South Carolina, she was the No. 1 governor in America for Republicans of bringing China into her state.”
The Florida governor claimed that Haley has said China is a friend to America and argued that “bringing China into the state of South Carolina” was Haley’s “No. 1 achievement as governor.”
“I banned China from buying land in our state, and we kicked them out of our universities,” DeSantis said of his policies in Florida, a reference to Confucius Institutes.
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