Once again Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley went after each other on national television, this time in a head-to-head matchup with no other candidates as a distraction.
Once again, Donald Trump won the debate by just not being there. His absence was so powerful that both DeSantis and Haley could not avoid bemoaning his absence.
Both said Trump needed to be on the debate stage, which may sound good at first, but it’s an odd sort of claim for those wanting to be President that they can’t even have a proper debate without Donald Trump.
However, the main takeaway of the night was that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are both chronic liars.
No, really—just ask them. Nikki Haley has a special website devoted to Ron DeSantis’ “lies” and Ron DeSantis says he has video catching Nikki Haley in lie after lie after lie.
Professional politicians who lie…. Irony abounds.
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As I pointed out last night before the debate began, so far the polling data has shown Donald Trump’s instincts to be quite sharp on avoiding the debates. His rising poll numbers are strong argument that he’s won every debate just by not being there.
I suspect last night will not change that national trend much if at all.
From the start, both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley engaged in a tit-for-tat about what the other candidate said (or “lied about”, which was the common framing).
Ron DeSantis landed the first blow straight away with his labeling of Nikki Haley as a “mealy-mouthed politician.”
…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 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've had enough of that.
Haley for her part fired right back with the unusual tactic of pointing to the website her campaign set up to address all of DeSantis’ presumed “lies”.
You're going to find out tonight that there's going to be a lot of Ron's lies that have happened—there are at least a couple of dozen so far that he's 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's at least two dozen lies that he's told about me—and you can see where fact Checkers say exactly what's going to happen and exactly why it's wrong.
A word on the Haley website desantislies.com: It does summarize a number of claimed “lies” made by Ron DeSantis, and provides “fact-checking” links to debunk each and every one of them.
However, the presumed “lies” are not actual verbatim quotes by Ron DeSantis, but claimed paraphrasing of something Ron DeSantis said. Not only does this raise questions of the accuracy of the asserted “lie” but it omits all context in the same fashion Ron DeSantis numerous claims about things Nikki Haley has said omits all context.
Is DeSantislies.com an accurate and faithful rendering of DeSantis’ statements regarding Nikki Haley? I have my doubts, but I leave it to the reader to reach their own conclusions.
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's 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's on videotape saying it and so we have all the greatest hits.
How well either tactic worked is a question debate viewers will have to decide for themselves, but it would have been far more impressive on either side if they had managed to take just one “lie” and provide chapter and verse, date and time on it.
Still, given that Ron DeSantis did not appear to be much fazed by Haley’s accusations of lying, and was able to come swinging back every time, I did not see the tactic working much for Nikki Haley.
While DeSantis arguably made little headway with his own charges about what Nikki Haley said, he did succeed more than once in getting Nikki Haley to spend inordinate time talking about him and his track record than her own track record either as governor of South Carolina or UN ambassador under Donald Trump.
There were multiple instances when the CNN moderators (Jake Tapper and Dana Bash) asked questions that the candidates tried very hard not to answer.
The first dodged question was regarding Donald Trump’s character and fitness to be President:
Governor Haley when Governor Christie dropped out of the race just a few hours ago he said the most important issue is quote “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?
Note that this is a “yes/no” form of a question. Neither candidate was willing to say either “yes” or “no”.
Nikki Haley first rhapsodized about “moral clarity”.
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.
However, the closest she could come to answering the “character” question was to say that Donald Trump was not “the right President to go forward."
Ron DeSantis chose to dwell on all the things President Trump failed to accomplish.
Well, I'm running because I'm the guy that's going to be able to engineer a comeback for 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 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.
However, neither that litany of presumptive Trump failures nor his subsequent pivot to how Nikki Haley would not be able to follow through on any of them never answered the “character” question.
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’s response was rambling and mainly based on repeating yet again her website desantislies.com. but at no point did she provide a substantive answer to the question.
DeSantis was less rambling but also focused mostly on attacking Haley, and also never provided a substantive answer to the question.
Neither candidate wanted to give clear and definitive answers on Ukraine or Israel—two foreign policy issues where policy clarity as well as moral clarity are immediate imperatives.
Neither candidate would give a “yes/no” answer to the question of whether or not they would authorize military strikes against targets inside of Iran—essentially whether or not they would potentially start a war with Iran.
The primary focus of both candidates was attacking each other and tearing each other down. That was a shame, for some of the questions were actually decent questions from the moderators. Even though it might not have moved the needle much as far as the electoral outcomes in Iowa and New Hampshire, a robust debate on policy would have done the country as a whole a lot of good. We did not get a robust debate on policy. We did not get a robust debate on policy period.
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.
When Judge Florence Pan asked Sauer if a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival could be charged, the attorney appeared to equivocate, saying the president would first have to have been impeached and convicted by the Senate in order to be prosecuted. That’s in keeping with the defense argument that immunity applies to former presidents who, like Trump, have been impeached but acquitted.
What both the moderators and the candidates conveniently overlooked was the words “impeached and convicted.” Readers will recall I have advocated a broadly similar position regarding the cases being pursued against Donald Trump. While the example of using SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival is an extreme example, it also highlights the core thesis of the argument I have advanced:
The lesson here is clear: deal with the political issues first, and only then deal with the legal issues.
If the case is not so strong as to overcome political divisions and rivalries, how can it possibly be strong enough to secure conviction at a criminal trial, where the standards of evidence are much higher and much more stringent? Also, unless the political elements of the case are properly adjudicated, how can a current or former President hope to receive a fair trial—the very question that bedeviled Gerald Ford after Richard Nixon’s resignation and which led to him issuing a blanket pardon to Nixon?
…but I think there's a larger issue Republicans have got to think of it. Donald Trump's going to lose that appeal, he's going to end up going to trial in front of a stacked left-wing DC 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 6 legal issues, criminal trials…the Democrats and the media would love to run with that.
Chew on this one phrase for a moment: “he's going to end up going to trial in front of a stacked left-wing DC jury of all Democrats.”
If the jury is “stacked” and “all Democrats”, the inference is clear that Ron DeSantis does not expect Donald Trump to get a fair trial. However, he’s not concerned about this blatant violation of Donald Trump’s Constitutional rights as a defendant, nor is he terribly concerned about the proper mechanisms for achieving due process against a current or former President. He simply does not want to confront these obvious Constitutional questions, and so his solution is to jettison Donald Trump.
This from a man who promises to “follow the Constitution.”
What 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 an ordering the assassination of a political rival unless that president is impeached and convicted by the senate for that offense first?
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.
However, what Haley’s response neglected was that Trump’s lawyer was not arguing that. The gist of the argument was that—just as I have said previously—step one in holding a President accountable is impeachment.
We need to consider the ramifications of Haley’s “common sense” approach. Implicit in her response is the notion that impeachment is merely a partisan political exercise and thus it affords no real way to bring a President to accountability before the law.
If that supposition is correct, then the Constitution is already lost to us and the Republic is already dead and buried. If that supposition is correct, the courts are now where politics as well as facts, evidence, and the law are adjudicated, which reduces the law to merely a weapon of whichever political faction holds sway in the moment.
Haley also styled herself as someone who “of course” would follow the Constitution’s dictates—while ignoring a substantive argument that impeachment before prosecution is the Constitutional dictate.
Frankly, it would have been interesting for Haley and DeSantis to have an entire debate focused just on the many Constitutional questions that arise from the myriad efforts to persecute prosecute Donald Trump and otherwise prevent him from even appearing on any Presidential ballot. A debate on that would at least have the virtue of revealing what both candidates think the Constitution says and what the Constitution means. Personally, those are the questions I want answered of anyone who presumes to run for elective federal office.
Ultimately, because neither candidate wanted to substantively address most of the issues raised during the debate, the winner in my estimation was once again Donald Trump. Neither candidate had the presence or the policy substance to give solid answers to important questions. Neither candidate had the presence or the Constitutional literacy to argue all the ways the current regime has been shredding, ignoring, and violating the Constitution with impunity. Neither candidate articulated even a remotely plausible vision for the future of this country.
In the end, the one thing both candidates said with which I agree wholehearedly is this: they need Donald Trump, which means the country will do far better with Trump as President than either Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley.
As has been the case throughout the debates, the candidates on the debate stage have been by far the strongest argument to be made for returning Trump to the Oval Office. Whatever flaws Donald Trump has—and he definitely has more than a few flaws—the other candidates have most of those same flaws and many more as well.
This fifth GOP debate is not likely to shift any hearts and minds in advance of the Iowa Caucuses on January 15 or the New Hampshire Primary on January 23rd. For Haley and DeSantis, that makes last night’s debate a completely wasted effort.
All Facts Matter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Alternatively, please consider making a donation via Ko-Fi. Thank you always for your support!
I realize that I’m gushing at you all the time, Mr. Kust, but I’m just continuously impressed with your superlative analytical mind and insights. You are more spot-on with this political piece than any other commentators I’ve encountered on any format. Well done!
Looks to me like they both took out themselves and each other.
They're not adult enough to run for the presidency.
That leaves Trump and who the DemocRATS eventually nominate (Biden but who knows).
I realize that I’m gushing at you all the time, Mr. Kust, but I’m just continuously impressed with your superlative analytical mind and insights. You are more spot-on with this political piece than any other commentators I’ve encountered on any format. Well done!