In Wednesday’s last presidential discussion of the year, four Republican candidates fought for two hours, sometimes yelling and attacking each other. Trump, the Republican front-runner, was not there, as he has been for all three previous debates.
That didn’t stop Chris Christie, who used to be governor of New Jersey, from criticizing the former president and saying that other people were afraid to question him. Trump is still far ahead of his opponents, even though he is facing 91 felony charges and a civil lawsuit.
Hamas and Israel
After Hamas terrorists struck Israel two months ago, the Republican candidates all agreed that Israel should be able to fight its own war without any help from the US.
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida said, “This administration is trying to make it harder for Israel to defend itself.” He blamed Hamas for wanting “a second Holocaust.”
The governor also stated that Iran should not get any more money from oil sales because they “send it to Hamas, to Hezbollah, and they stir up Jihad all over the Middle East.”
According to Nikki Haley, a former UN ambassador, Russian President Vladimir Putin is happy that the United States has turned its attention from Ukraine to Israel. He said, “There is a reason why Taiwanese want to help Ukrainians because they know that if Ukraine wins, China won’t invade Taiwan.”
When she talked about Ukrainians who want to help Israel, she said, “They know that if Iran wins, Russia wins.”Despite all of that, a strong America wins. We now have that thanks to Joe Biden.”
Christie replied to the NewsNation question about whether he would send U.S. troops to free the American hostages being held by Hamas and other terrorists, “You’re damn right, I would send the American army in there to get them out safely.”
Southern border and fentanyl
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy says that he would have had a different conversation with China’s leader than President Biden about fentanyl coming into the US through the southern border. He would have told Xi Jinping, “You will not only not buy land in this country or donate to universities,” but also that “U.S. businesses won’t expand into the Chinese market” until China stops making fentanyl for the Mexican drug cartels.
To stop people from coming in, Governor DeSantis wants to label drug gangs as “foreign terrorist organizations.” He also says he will build a wall along the border, but unlike President Trump, he will get Mexico to pay for it. She said she would “end all normal trade relationships with China” because she thought that was where the drug came from.
Attacking the Former President
According to a Messenger and Harris study, former President Donald Trump received the most support from Republican voters (68%), DeSantis received 9%, and Haley received 7%. Ramaswamy got 4% of the vote, while Christie and all the other nominees got 1% or less.
The candidates tried to set themselves apart from the former president on Wednesday in case he couldn’t run because of his court cases.
“They missed the chance to attack the real frontrunner in the race,” says Kaivan Shroff, a political commentator and Dream for America press secretary. The only person who did that was Chris Christie.
Trump was called an “angry, bitter man who wants to be back as president because he wants to get back at anyone who has disagreed with him” by Christie.
In the last discussion of the year, Haley and DeSantis showed they were too scared to make the case against Trump, and Shroff says they will pay the price.
In his speech, Ramaswamy made fun of the current and past presidents and his opponents on stage. He said, “To unite this country, we need a leader from the outside with fresh legs from the next generation.”
On to The First Official Challenge: Iowa in January
The Iowa Republican caucus on January 15, 2024, is the first election in the 2024 presidential race. Analysts believe that Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur, maybe the most vulnerable candidate. This is particularly true after making rude personal comments about his opponents on Wednesday night, which made the crowd boo.
An expert in politics from Emory University in Georgia, Andra Gillespie, says, “I think he has reached the peak of his campaign.” Ramaswamy is a “novelty” to Gillespie because he hasn’t been an option before. “Now the only question is, ‘How long can he keep running?'”
At the same time, Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, said he would stay in the race. He thinks he will keep running until the January 23 primary in New Hampshire “or until he runs out of money.”
99 Counties
On Saturday, DeSantis finished his tour of all 99 counties in Iowa, where he was trying to win over votes in the midwestern state before the caucuses. The website 538 released the most recent poll trends on Wednesday, which show that Trump has a 45.9% lead in Iowa over DeSantis (19.7%), Haley (17.5%), Ramaswamy (4.8%), and Christie (3.9%).
