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    Fact Checking Nikki Haley’s DeSantis Lies Website

    During this week’s debate in Iowa, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, tirelessly promoted a website to fact-check Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. We took a closer look, and here’s what we found.More than a dozen times during Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, directed viewers to a website purporting to correct what she called Ron DeSantis’s “lies.”But the Haley campaign’s website is itself a political project — not an exercise in objective fact-checking.The site does point to independent fact-checking to help push back on claims twisting Ms. Haley’s positions on things like Gaza refugees and to clarify her comments about being motivated to run for office by a speech made by Hillary Clinton, despite their political differences.But there are key differences between Ms. Haley’s effort and an independent fact-checking operation. The website, for example, doesn’t directly quote Mr. DeSantis or cite the specific comments being rebutted. It also deems a “lie” some statements that don’t actually contain checkable facts.“Mr. DeSantis claims he will take on the big spenders in Washington,” the site says, calling his claim a lie because while in Congress he voted to increase the federal debt limit. Ms. Haley may well use that line of criticism in her campaign, but that alone doesn’t make Mr. DeSantis’s statements about his intent to rein in federal spending a “lie.”“Ultimately it’s still campaign propaganda,” said Bill Adair, the creator of the website PolitiFact and a Duke University journalism professor. “It’s not fact-checking.”It’s certainly not the first time a political campaign has harnessed the style of fact-checking for its own objectives, Mr. Adair said, noting that the 2008 Obama campaign created a website to push back against “smears.”On the debate stage Wednesday, “it was just trumpeted more prominently and more often than I’ve ever seen it before,” Mr. Adair said. He added: “I think that shows that fact-checking has matured to the point where candidates are pretending to be fact checkers to try to give their own account of facts, although often it’s not the full truth.”Here’s further context on several of the claims made on Ms. Haley’s website, Desantislies.com.Gender-transition careThe website states that “DeSantis falsely claims Nikki Haley supports gender-changing surgeries for minors.” It goes on to say that, in fact, Ms. Haley “opposes gender-changing surgeries and puberty blockers for minors and is on record saying as much multiple times.”It is true that Ms. Haley has spoken out against minors being able to undergo gender-transition surgeries before the age of 18. But Mr. DeSantis and other critics have homed in on a comment she made in June — not mentioned on Ms. Haley’s website — suggesting that the law should not be involved in regulating such care.During a CBS interview, Ms. Haley was asked what the law should say regarding transgender care for youths. “I think the law should stay out of it, and I think parents should handle it,” Ms. Haley responded.Still, even then, Ms. Haley added that “when that child becomes 18, if they want to make more of a permanent change they can do that.”Free speechThe website says that “DeSantis falsely claims Haley opposes free speech on social media,” and points out that Mr. DeSantis previously expressed support for legal efforts to crack down on journalists’ use of anonymous sources.But the site ignores that Ms. Haley did in November call for requiring social media users to be verified by name, before walking back her comments amid criticism.“When I get into office, the first thing we have to do, social media accounts, social media companies, they have to show America their algorithms,” Ms. Haley said during a Fox News event. “Let us see why they’re pushing what they’re pushing. The second thing is every person on social media should be verified by their name.”Ms. Haley added: “First of all, it’s a national security threat. When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say. And it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots and the Chinese bots. And then you’re going to get some civility when people know their name is next to what they say, and they know their pastor and their family members are going to see it.”Mr. DeSantis quickly criticized her comments, saying, “Haley’s proposal to ban anonymous speech online — similar to what China recently did — is dangerous and unconstitutional.”A day later, Ms. Haley said on CNBC that “life would be more civil” if people did not post anonymously, but noted: “I don’t mind anonymous American people having free speech. What I don’t like is anonymous Russians and Chinese and Iranians having free speech.”Confronted during the December Republican debate, Ms. Haley misleadingly claimed she “never said government should go and require anyone’s name.”TaxesMr. DeSantis and his supporters have made misleading claims about Ms. Haley’s record on taxes while she was governor of South Carolina. But the claims weren’t always found to be categorically false, as Ms. Haley’s website contends.The website links to four articles, including two from The New York Times. In one example, The Times fact-checked a pro-DeSantis super PAC’s argument that Ms. Haley “raised taxes” and found it to be misleading.That’s because, technically speaking, Ms. Haley cosponsored legislation passed in 2006 that did raise the state sales tax by one percentage point. But that measure also exempted owner-occupants from paying property taxes for schools — among other provisions — and was considered by experts to be a “tax swap,” not a tax increase. An analysis at the time projected that most homeowners would have an overall decreased tax burden.ChinaCalling Ms. Haley the “most outspoken candidate on the growing China threat,” the website claims that “DeSantis falsely attacks Nikki Haley’s record on China.”There have indeed been distortions: Mr. DeSantis claimed that Ms. Haley gave a Chinese company land near a military base, referring to a fiberglass company. But while Ms. Haley celebrated the company’s opening of a plant in South Carolina, and although the state provided a grant for improving the site, it was the county government — not the state — that provided the land as part of a deal to secure hundreds of jobs.But it’s worth noting that the flawed attacks have gone both ways.For example, a pro-Haley super PAC wrongly claimed that Mr. DeSantis “voted to fast-track Obama’s Chinese trade deals.” That claim was based on a vote Mr. DeSantis took as a congressman in 2015 to extend the president’s authority to fast-track trade legislation (he was among 190 Republicans in the House to vote for it). No trade agreements subject to that authority were made with China. More

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    Winners and Losers From the Fifth Republican Debate in Iowa

    Welcome to Opinion’s commentary for the fifth Republican presidential debate, held in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday night. In this special feature, Times Opinion writers and contributors rate the candidates on a scale of 0 to 10: 0 means the candidate didn’t belong on the stage and should have dropped out before the debate even […] More

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    Haley and DeSantis Summon the Right Fury for the Wrong Target

    I wish Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis had shown a quarter as much contempt for Donald Trump as they did for each other.Oh, they faulted Trump for not appearing onstage in Des Moines on Wednesday for the final Republican presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses. He arrogantly skipped it, just as he’d arrogantly skipped all the others.When pressed, Haley and DeSantis made clearer than they did in the past that he indeed put himself before the Constitution when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and that what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, was no beautiful display of patriotism. It was a shameful act of disorder.And they had scattered other criticisms of the former president. DeSantis listed many of the promises that Trump didn’t keep. Haley blamed Trump for the depth and breadth of the divisions in America and for creating a degree of chaos that forbids meaningful progress.But those complaints all but receded behind their furious, puerile and relentless attacks on each other. And that made neither political nor moral sense.Haley and DeSantis are the only candidates other than Trump who qualified for the debate. They are the only candidates with any chance of beating him in the Republican primaries and getting the party’s presidential nomination. But that chance is meager, the clock is ticking, and Trump, to go by polls, has held on firmly to his enormous lead. They need to take him down.And for all their considerable flaws, all their embarrassing flubs and all their elaborate fudging of their records, both Haley and DeSantis have infinitely less to account and apologize for than Trump does. He’s the necessary target of their wrath, the rightful recipient of their disdain, an urgent threat to American democracy. But you wouldn’t have known that from the small fraction of their attention that he received, an inadequate measure that distills the Republican Party’s disgrace. It won’t own or slay the monster it created. It’s just too damned terrified.Instead, Haley and DeSantis engaged in a rubber-glue back-and-forth about who was the bigger liar. I can recap almost the entire debate in just a few lines of loosely (but not all that loosely!) paraphrased dialogue.Haley: Stop lying about me!DeSantis: No, you stop lying about me!Haley: You’re the liar!DeSantis: I know you are, but what am I?Haley: You’re so desperate. You’re just so desperate.Haley actually said those last two sentences. And they were strangely refreshing inasmuch as they weren’t one of her endlessly repeated instructions to go to the website desantislies.com. She mentioned that site seemingly every 30 seconds, regardless of what question the debate’s moderators had put to her. She was like a broken GPS system. No matter where you asked her to take you, she directed you to the same old place.DeSantis wasn’t any more high-minded. He banged on and on about what a sellout Haley was, about how she was constantly caving to big business or “the woke mob” or the Chinese. He was especially and inexplicably fond of a line that he used in various ways at various times — that she embodied the “pale pastels” of “warmed-over corporatism.” Was he upset that her corporatism wasn’t freshly sautéed? Was he claiming a sartorial edge and asserting some parable in the contrast between his red tie and her muted pink dress? Color me unimpressed.Except for when DeSantis, whose scripted lines were mostly clichés, delivered one of anomalous cleverness. Referring to Haley’s recent string of highly publicized gaffes, he said, “She’s got this problem with ballistic podiatry — shooting herself in the foot.”Funny as that was, it was even sadder because it was an example of how and where these two candidates lavished their energy: not on sounding the alarm about Trump that needs sounding (and re-sounding), not on holding themselves up as inspiring alternatives to him but on cutting each other down. That was clearly what they’d practiced most. Scorn was their comfort zone.So when they were asked, in the final minutes, to name something about the other that they admired, they lapsed into babble and incoherence.After a few compulsory words about Haley’s service as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, DeSantis said: “I also appreciate the state of South Carolina. My wife is a College of Charleston graduate.” So Haley is admirable because she’s proximal to Casey DeSantis’s alma mater?Haley’s answer — “I think he’s been a good governor” — made even less sense, because she had just spent the better part of two hours talking about all the ways in which he’d been a terrible leader for Florida and how awful it would be if he molded America in his state’s image.They did indeed engage in specifics like that, providing details about their own and each other’s records, establishing an important divergence in their views on aid to Ukraine, forecasting the future of Social Security and promising to fortify the country’s southwestern border. From time to time, the two of them engaged in something not all that dissimilar from a constructive old-fashioned debate.But that was the exception to the rule and to the rancor, and what stood out more than any policy discussion was a depressing paradox: Both of them said that America needed to turn the page, but both modeled the negativity, mockery and spite of the country’s current chapter.“How did you blow through $150 million in your campaign, and you were down in the polls?” Haley asked DeSantis. She visibly relished her dig. Where was that ridicule for Trump?Chris Christie, we miss you! Hours before the debate, which Christie hadn’t qualified for, he dropped out of the race, and he was caught in a hot mic moment, apparently dismissing Haley as “not up to this” and saying that DeSantis was “petrified” about the trajectory of the race. Their performances on Wednesday night bore Christie out. Send him to Delphi and put him in a cave. He’s an oracle.I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Facebook, Threads and X (@FrankBruni).The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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    DeSantis and Haley clash over military aid to Ukraine.

    After about 30 minutes of debate featuring repeated promotions of campaign websites and dozens of permutations of the word “lie,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley diverged on actual policy: the war in Ukraine.Foreign policy is a topic Ms. Haley has seized on in previous debates, showcasing a fluency with international issues from her time as ambassador to the United Nations and often trampling over the provocations of isolationist candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy.She took a similar tack Wednesday night in drawing a stark contrast with Mr. DeSantis over military aid to Ukraine. Ms. Haley qualified that she did not support putting American troops on the ground but said it was important to help Ukraine in order to prevent a wider global conflict, assist “a pro-American, freedom-loving country” and prevent the further march of Russia.“This is about preventing war — it’s always been about preventing war,” Ms. Haley said. “If we support Ukraine, that’s only 3.5 percent of our defense budget.”Mr. DeSantis, who has been much more critical of American support for Ukraine, depicted Ms. Haley’s position as in line with President Biden’s, decrying what he described as an unending commitment to what could be a lengthy conflict.“They will not tell you when they’ve achieved their goal, and this is going to go on maybe hundreds of billions more into the future,” Mr. DeSantis said, claiming that Ms. Haley cared “more about Ukraine’s border than she does about our own southern border.”Ms. Haley denounced that as a false choice, jumping in without prompting from the moderators after Mr. DeSantis finished.“This is the lie they’re telling the American people over and over again,” she said. “They’re saying you have to choose between Ukraine or Israel, Israel and securing the border.“It is so wrong to say this,” she said. More

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    How to Watch the Republican Debate Taking Place in Iowa

    Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis will meet on Wednesday night in Des Moines for the last Republican presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses on Monday.CNN will host the debate starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time.Where can I watch?CNN is broadcasting the debate on cable and will stream it free on CNN.com. Subscribers to the streaming service Max can watch via CNN Max.Which candidates will be there?Only three candidates — Mr. DeSantis, Ms. Haley and Donald J. Trump — met CNN’s qualification requirements. To make it onto the debate stage, candidates had to have at least 10 percent support in a minimum of three distinct polls of national Republican primary voters or Iowa Republican caucusgoers.Mr. Trump, the front-runner, has not attended any of the four previous Republican primary debates. He won’t attend this one either, leaving Mr. DeSantis, Florida’s governor, and Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, to face off one on one. Instead, Mr. Trump will join the Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum for a live town hall at the same time as the debate.In a departure from the four previous debates, the Republican National Committee is not a sponsor of the one on Wednesday. In December, the party decided it would stop participating in future debates, giving the hosting TV networks freedom to set their own qualification rules.Who are the moderators?Dana Bash and Jack Tapper, co-hosts of CNN’s Sunday show “State of the Union,” will moderate the debate.Is this the last primary debate?No. ABC News and WMUR, a Hearst television station in New Hampshire, will host a debate in that state on Jan. 18. And CNN plans to host another debate, also in New Hampshire, on Jan. 21. More

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    How to Watch Donald Trump’s Fox News Town Hall

    Former President Donald J. Trump will join the Fox anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday for a live town-hall event. It will be broadcast on Fox News and can be streamed at Foxnews.com with a cable login.Mr. Trump will take the stage in Des Moines at the same time that the fifth Republican presidential primary debate is set to begin just two miles away. He has snubbed all of the presidential debates so far, often scheduling his own counterprogramming.That hasn’t hurt him much in Iowa, where recent polls show him leading his competitors by more than 30 points ahead of the caucuses on Monday.This will be Mr. Trump’s first live appearance on Fox News in nearly two years. The network hosted similar town halls this week with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. More

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    Trump to Skip CNN Debate in Iowa to Attend Fox News Town Hall

    Donald J. Trump is expected to participate in a Fox News town hall on the same day, the network announced Tuesday.A Republican presidential primary debate that CNN plans to host in Des Moines next week will be a one-on-one showdown between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who are fighting to emerge from the state’s caucuses as the definitive alternative to former President Donald J. Trump.Both Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, are long shots to win the caucuses, given that they are trailing Mr. Trump in polls of Iowans by more than 30 points on average. But if either one is to have even a small chance of claiming the nomination, that person needs to drive the other out of the race, which they could do — or at least take a first step toward doing — by beating them for second place in Iowa.Mr. Trump did not participate in the official debates sponsored by the Republican National Committee last year, and he will not participate in the CNN debate in Iowa either. (The Iowa event will be followed by a similar one in New Hampshire.) And no other candidate qualified by the deadline on Tuesday.Participants needed at least 10 percent support in three national or Iowa polls that met CNN’s criteria, including at least one poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has largely ignored Iowa in favor of campaigning in New Hampshire; and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas did not meet that mark.In a post on X saying he wouldn’t participate even if he qualified, Mr. Ramaswamy expressed anger at CNN over the network’s fact-checking of the conspiracy theories he advanced during a town-hall event last month and about CNN anchors’ and commentators’ criticism of him. He also faulted the network for rejecting some polls that the Republican National Committee accepted to qualify candidates for its debates.He said he would instead do a live show with the right-wing commentator Tim Pool on Jan. 10, the night of the debate. Mr. Trump is scheduled to participate in his own counterprogramming: a town-hall event that Fox News announced on Tuesday.Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley both criticized Mr. Trump’s refusal to participate.“With only three candidates qualifying, it’s time for Donald Trump to show up,” Ms. Haley said in a statement. “As the debate stage continues to shrink, it’s getting harder for Donald Trump to hide.”A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, Andrew Romeo, said Mr. Trump was “scared” to defend his record and said mockingly, “If it would make the debate more inviting, we would gladly agree to make it a seated format where the former president would be more comfortable.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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    DeSantis Bashes Trump for Bragging About Debating Hillary Clinton

    Gov. Ron DeSantis escalated his attacks on the former president after Mr. Trump bragged about debating Hillary Clinton in 2016.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida accused former President Donald J. Trump of “cowardice” for refusing to participate in the Republican presidential primary debates after Mr. Trump boasted about facing Hillary Clinton in 2016 following the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape.“Trump denigrates military service by claiming it is ‘braver’ that he debated Hillary Clinton than what soldiers endure on the battlefield,” Mr. DeSantis, a former Navy lawyer, wrote on the social media platform X on Sunday. “Debating isn’t ‘brave’; it’s the bare minimum any candidate should do. Hiding from debates, on the other hand, is an example of cowardice.”The Florida governor was responding to comments that Mr. Trump — who has said he is too far ahead of his rivals in the polls to debate them — had made during a speech to New York Republicans on Saturday. In his remarks, Mr. Trump recounted how a general had praised him for taking the debate stage against Mrs. Clinton in 2016 even though a damaging recording of him making vulgar statements about women had recently been made public.Mr. Trump claimed the general had told him: “Sir, I’ve been on the battlefield. Men have gone down on my left and on my right. I stood on hills where soldiers were killed. But I believe the bravest thing I’ve ever seen was the night you went onto that stage with Hillary Clinton after what happened.”Mr. DeSantis has often been hesitant to directly attack Mr. Trump, who remains popular with Republican voters, limiting his criticisms to certain topics such as his inability to serve two terms and his failure to achieve policy objectives like building a border wall and “draining the swamp” during his first administration. One of Mr. DeSantis’s other go-to attacks has been on Mr. Trump’s decision not to take part in the four Republican debates held so far. But calling the former president a coward represents something of an escalation for Mr. DeSantis as his campaign continues to underperform expectations.The former president, who has a history of manufacturing anecdotes, did not name the general. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said that Mr. DeSantis was having “a meltdown of epic proportions by regurgitating Democrat talking points.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More