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Five Republican candidates for the U.S. presidency faced off against Donald Trump in a prime-time debate in Florida on Wednesday, as they sought to burnish their foreign policy credibility while sparring over America’s relationship with Israel, Ukraine and China.
The former president, the undisputed frontrunner in a shaky field of Republicans vying for the party’s nomination for the White House, skipped the debate and held a campaign rally on the other side of Miami.
That didn’t stop several candidates on stage from attacking Trump and blaming him for the Republican Party’s disappointing results in a series of closely watched off-year elections on Tuesday.
“He owes it to you to stand on this stage and explain why he should be given another chance,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said. “He said Republicans will get tired of winning. [After] From what we saw last night, I’m tired of Republicans losing.”
Nikki Haley, who was nominated by Trump as US ambassador to the UN, said: “I can tell you that I think he was the right president at the right time. I don’t think he is the right president now.”
“I’m angry about what happened last night,” biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said of Tuesday’s election results, but he directed his anger at the Republican National Committee rather than Trump. “We have become a party of losers,” Ramaswamy said.
Wednesday night’s debate was the third primetime event hosted by the RNC, following debates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Simi Valley, California.
It was also the first time the candidates shared a platform since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
All five pledged to support Israel’s right to defend itself and had harsh words for Hamas.
DeSantis said that as President he would tell Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job once and for all with these butchers Hamas.” Haley said she would tell Israel’s prime minister to “finish them off.”
But Haley drew fire from Ramaswamy, who has adopted a more isolationist foreign policy agenda. The biotech entrepreneur called the former UN ambassador, the only woman in the debate, “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels,” referring to George W. Bush’s hawkish vice president.
Haley and Ramaswamy also exchanged views on whether the U.S. should provide more aid to Ukraine. Ramaswamy, who opposed more money for Kiev, said the European country was “not a paragon of democracy” and appeared to call its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a Nazi.
Haley said of Ramaswamy: “[Vladimir] Putin and Xi [Jinping] drooling at the thought that such a person could become president.”
She was supported by Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, who said supporting Ukraine is “the price we pay for being the leaders of the free world.”
The candidates also argued about America’s relationship with China, including whether Congress should ban TikTok, the social media app.
Ramaswamy, the only candidate using the app, at one point went after Haley because her adult daughter used it. The former UN ambassador replied, muttering: “You’re just scum.”
DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy and Christie were joined on the debate stage by Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.
At one point, Scott, a social conservative, urged his fellow candidates to pass a federal ban on abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy. Republicans’ moves to restrict access to the proceedings after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade last year led to the party’s disappointing results at the ballot box.
But Haley in particular refused to endorse the idea, saying it was unrealistic to expect a future president to get enough votes in the U.S. Senate to impose an abortion ban. “Let’s come to an agreement,” she said.
It was a smaller lineup than in previous debates after former Vice President Mike Pence dropped out of the race last month and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson failed to meet the polling and donor requirements of the RNC.
The event also marked the third time Trump avoided the debate stage. The former president and his allies say he does not need to participate in the debates given the size of his lead in the polls.
Speaking to supporters at his rally in Hialeah, just north of Miami, Trump insisted that “nobody” was “talking about” the Republican debate and called his opponents “unobservable.”
The former president called on the “Republican establishment” to “stop wasting time and resources in attempts to replace weak and ineffective Rinos [Republicans in name only] and Never Trumpers that no one wants to vote for and that no one is going to vote for.”
Trump remains the clear frontrunner in the race for the nomination, with DeSantis in a distant second place according to polls, followed by Haley in third.
Trump has also been supported in recent weeks by several polls showing him beating US President Joe Biden in a hypothetical contest.