US Republican debate 2024 updates: Haley and DeSantis trade barbs in Iowa

This live page is now closed. For key takeaways from the fifth Republican primary debate of the 2024 US presidential election, read our explainer here.

You can also read more about how, despite his legal troubles, Donald Trump still has a hold on the nomination.

And for more analysis ahead of next week’s Iowa caucuses about how Republican Governor Kim Reynolds broke from Trump, check out our story here.

It’s on to the Iowa caucuses on Monday, which will kick off the primary season in earnest.

After that will be the primary in New Hampshire on January 23. Then contests across the country will follow until a Republican candidate is officially named at the party’s national convention in July.

Haley and DeSantis are slated to face off on the debate stage twice more before then. ABC plans to host one on January 18, and another CNN debate is on the docket for January 21.

In a post on X, the Democratic Party noted that the Republican debate took place not far from an Iowa school where a student opened fire last week, killing a sixth-grader and injuring five others.

Yet DeSantis and Haley “didn’t mention it once”, the party said.

“They don’t care about you or your children’s safety.”

Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis were less than an hour away from Perry High School, where a horrific shooting took place last week, and didn't mention it once.

They don't care about you or your children's safety.

— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) January 11, 2024

The US president seized on Trump’s response to a question on abortion at his town hall tonight.

When asked how he would ensure abortion remains restricted, Trump fumbled: He touted the rollback of Roe v Wade while he was in office, while acknowledging the electoral blowback that has resulted since.

“Just like he said: He did it,” Biden posted on the social media platform X.

Just like he said: he did it. https://t.co/A0DbnecLuN

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 11, 2024

DeSantis and Haley focused predominantly on each other during the debate, and less on the elephant again absent from the room: Trump.

That meant there were more fireworks than in Trump’s counterprogramming, the Fox News town hall.

But by focusing on each other, and not the frontrunner, it’s unclear if either candidate was able to move the political dial where it matters most.

Trump, Haley and DeSantis are all slated to go head-to-head in the Iowa caucuses on January 15.

And that’s a wrap on the fifth Republican debate of the primary season.

In closing statements, Haley said the voters in Iowa know “that we can’t go through four more years of chaos”, further underscoring her platform as the antidote to Trump.

DeSantis, meanwhile, sought to portray himself as the only candidate who can deliver on his promises.

“Donald Trump’s running for his issues, Nikki Haley’s running for her donors’ issues. I’m running for your issues, your family’s issues,” he said.

The moderators of tonight’s CNN Republican primary debate asked DeSantis and Haley to describe what they admire about each other.

DeSantis demurred, complementing Haley’s home state of South Carolina more than the former UN envoy herself.

Haley, meanwhile, responded with a single sentence: “I think he’s been a good governor.”

The debate briefly touched upon the death of George Floyd, the Black man who was killed when a police officer knelt on his neck in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for more than nine minutes.

Haley had tweeted in May 2020 that Floyd’s death was “personal and painful for everyone”.

“But people in Iowa had nothing to do with that – or Florida or South Carolina. She was virtue signalling to the left. She was accepting the narrative,” DeSantis said.

Floyd’s killing sparked nationwide racial justice protests in 2020. Derek Chauvin, the police officer who held Floyd down, was later convicted of murder.

DeSantis sought to portray Haley as lax in her response to the unrest. “I called out the National Guard,” he said.

However, DeSantis himself had condemned the killing of Floyd, saying at the time the killing was “murder”.

Both candidates at the debate took aim at Biden administration subsidies aimed at fostering clean energy.

DeSantis said the policies are unfairly hurting US citizens. “They want to take away your freedom, and they want you to pay more for everything,” he said.

He pledged to take drastic action if elected to the presidency. “On day one as president, we take Biden’s Green New Deal. We tear it up and throw it in the trash can,” DeSantis said.

“China is building two coal plants a week,” he added. “China is the problem here.”

For her part, Haley said that the US should be doing more to hold “India and China” accountable for climate change.

She described protecting the environment as an issue across parties, but she said the big question was: “How do we do that?” Her answer: “We’ll roll back all of Biden’s green subsidies.”

Haley says COVID school lockdowns exacerbated mental health issues among young people.

“The problem is we don’t have enough mental health therapists. We don’t have enough mental health treatment centres. We don’t have enough addiction centres. And if you happen to be lucky enough to get one of those, insurance doesn’t cover it,” she said.

DeSantis, meanwhile, said he would put veterans at the centre of his mental health response.

Haley said the Republican Party’s goal should be: “How do we save as many babies as possible and support as many moms as possible?”

“We’re not going to demonise this issue any more. We’re not going to play politics with this issue any more. We’re going to treat it like the respectful issue that it is,” she said.

For his part, DeSantis said that, when Trump called Florida’s strict abortion ban a “terrible” thing, the former president had given “a gift to the left to weaponise that against pro-lifers, and that’s wrong”.

He also pushed for more support for families. “Republicans need to do a better job of lifting up people having children,” he said. “You have to be pro-life for the whole life.”

The relatively subdued event did not see Trump introduce any new policy points.

Instead, he mostly retread the battle lines of his 2020 run, giving a preview of what a Biden-Trump run-off would look like.

Topping his agenda: the economy and migration. He took swipes at Biden’s efforts to pivot to electric vehicles. He overlooked the record oil production of the Biden administration, instead saying he would “drill baby drill”.

The border, he said, is a “disaster” under Biden. A second Trump term would see him enact the “largest deportation effort” ever.

Meanwhile, the various criminal cases against Trump got little mention, as did the false claims he has made about the 2020 presidential election.

“I’m not gonna have time for retribution,” Trump said at one point. “There won’t be retribution. There’ll be success.”

Haley said that, while there were “discrepancies” in the 2020 vote, Trump lost and “Biden won that election”.

She said it was “wrong” for Trump to continue to falsely claim that the vote was stolen from him.

“I think what happened on January 6 was a terrible day, and I think President Trump will have to answer for it,” she said, drawing some applause.

When asked whether Americans could anticipate their retirement age to be increased, DeSantis said no – with a caveat.

“I would never raise the retirement age in the face of declining life expectancy,” he said, pointing to trends in US demographics. “I don’t see how you can raise the retirement age when life expectancy is collapsing in this country.”

He also spoke directly to older Americans: “I am not going to mess with seniors’ benefits.”

Moderators, meanwhile, asked Haley if people in their 20s could anticipate their retirement age to be upped. “They should plan on their retirement age being increased, yes,” she said.

The former UN envoy has continually accused DeSantis of lying tonight, telling debate-watchers many times to check out a new campaign website which she says documents his falsehoods.

“Ron’s lying because Ron is losing. Everybody in the country sees it for what it is,” she said.

Trump faced little in the way of tough questioning from audience members at tonight’s town hall, with many saying they had already decided they would be caucusing in support of him. Trump greeted some attendees warmly after the event.

For their part, moderators MacCallum and Baier did little prodding in their follow-up questions, maintaining a light atmosphere with virtually no moments of tension.

As far as his opponents, Trump predominantly focused on DeSantis, whose candidacy has had the most in common with the former president’s. Haley, meanwhile, was scarcely mentioned.

Trump repeatedly predicted DeSantis would drop out of the race shortly. He also took a dig at DeSantis’s “fancy shoes”, a reference to speculation the governor wears lifts to boost his height. DeSantis has denied doing so.

DeSantis has promised to use “more hard power in the Indo-Pacific” in response to China, including by “denying their ability to invade Taiwan”, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own territory.

The US considers China to be its largest geopolitical rival in the world, and over the past few years, tensions have mounted between Washington and Beijing.

For her part, Haley described China as the US’s “number-one national security threat”.

“I fought them every single day at the United Nations; I know what they’re capable of.”

Trump laid the blame for the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza on Biden, broadly saying the US president did not convey the same strength as he did when in office.

“China feared and Russia feared him, everybody,” Trump said, referring to himself in the third person.

“Peace through strength. They didn’t want to mess around. It would have never happened in Ukraine – Russia would have never gotten, it would have never happened. The recent attack on Israel would have never happened,” he continued.

“They see a weak president in our country, and they did something that was unthinkable.”

The former UN envoy says the Florida governor spent more money on private planes than on campaign ads.

“You’re invisible in New Hampshire. You’re invisible in South Carolina,” she said.

“You’ve gone down in the polls in Iowa. Why should we think you can manage or do anything in this country?”

The roll-back on federal abortion protections under Trump has proven a political liability for Republicans, who have faced numerous election defeats over the issue, from Ohio to Kentucky.

When asked about how he would “protect all life, every person’s right to life, without compromise”, Trump grappled with how to preserve limits on abortion while attracting voters.

He hailed his administration’s role in overturning Roe v Wade but added: “We still have to win elections. And they’ve [Democrats] used this.”

“So we’re going to come up with something that people want and people like,” he added. “They’re the radicals. We’re not the radicals, because they’ll kill a baby.”