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      Fact Checking Nikki Haley’s DeSantis Lies Website

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      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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      A Convicted Criminal as the Nominee? Trump’s Rivals Avoid Even Raising It

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      The former president’s legal jeopardy offers an obvious line of attack for Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, but fearing voter blowback, that cudgel remains largely unused.It is an obvious line of attack that has been creeping into the arsenal of rivals trying to stop former President Donald J. Trump ahead of the Iowa caucuses on Monday — if nominated to be the Republican Party’s White House standard-bearer, the former president could very well be a convicted criminal by Election Day.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida inched toward that cudgel at a debate on Wednesday night, warning that a “stacked left-wing D.C. jury” is likely to sit in judgment of Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election, and asking, “What are the odds that he’s going to get through that?”Then, he added, “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 Jan. 6, legal issues, criminal trials.”Former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina has been far more reluctant to broach his legal troubles, speaking almost daily of Mr. Trump as an agent of “chaos” and “disarray” without explicitly mentioning the 91 felony counts looming against him.But perhaps taking their cues from voters leery of attacks on the former president, Mr. Trump’s closest rivals continue to avoid one ominous word: conviction.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, left, and former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina have continued to avoid using one word: conviction.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesFor the Republican Party, the reality of Mr. Trump’s legal jeopardy is inescapable, and was underscored on Tuesday when he left the Iowa campaign trail to attend courthouse arguments on whether he can claim absolute legal immunity for any actions taken as president. Regardless of how voters feel about his indictments for subverting the 2020 election, mishandling highly classified documents and falsifying business records to cover up potential sex scandals during the 2016 presidential campaign, one of those cases could go to trial before the election.And a conviction by a jury of his peers after a widely publicized trial could land differently than the indictments themselves, which were dismissed by Mr. Trump and most of his rivals as political efforts by Democrats to interfere with the presidential election.“I actually still believe they will have a trial, and he will be convicted of at least one felony count,” said Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor and federal prosecutor still pursuing his quest for the Republican presidential nomination. “That puts the Republican Party in jeopardy: a flawed nominee, a historical precedent of a nominee convicted of a felony, and then a loss” in the general election.That might sound like a potent argument for Mr. Trump’s more prominent foes, but many Republican voters don’t want to hear it. On Tuesday morning, at an Irish pub in Waukee, Iowa, Nick and Kadee Miller of Adel, Iowa, were awaiting Ms. Haley when both expressed doubts about the charges facing Mr. Trump. They supported the decisions of Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis to steer clear.“I really do believe if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all,” said Ms. Miller, a 49-year-old political independent who remains undecided about her choice of candidates.Voters waited for Ms. Haley to speak at Mikey’s Irish Pub in Waukee, Iowa, on Thursday. Polling shows that a growing number of Mr. Trump’s supporters would not want him to be the Republican nominee if he were convicted of a crime.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesSteph Herold, a 62-year-old retiree from West Des Moines, said such negativity spent on Mr. Trump would waste Ms. Haley’s time.“What I love about Nikki is she speaks in facts and truth,” she said. During Mr. Trump’s presidency, “we all reverted back to the middle school playground, beating people up and being bullies. We don’t need more of that.”Bruce Norquist, a 60-year-old cybersecurity analyst from Urbandale, Iowa, was certain a conviction would only bolster Mr. Trump’s support, as the indictments did last year.But that is not what polling shows. Nearly a quarter of Mr. Trump’s own supporters told New York Times/Siena College pollsters in December that he should not be the Republican Party’s nominee if he is found guilty of a crime. Some 20 percent of those who identified themselves as Trump supporters said he should go to prison if convicted of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, and 23 percent of his supporters said in December that they believed he had committed “serious federal crimes,” up from 11 percent in July.“When you put it that way, a convicted felon, no, I don’t want to vote for a convicted felon,” Ms. Miller said, breaking with her husband, who said he would “absolutely” vote for a convicted Mr. Trump “if he could beat Biden.”On Wednesday, at a snow-covered vineyard in Indianola, Iowa, Laura Leszczynski, a 57-year-old security and information technology business owner from St. Mary’s, Iowa, was awaiting the entrepreneur-turned-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Still undecided, she conceded she was not well-versed in the cases arrayed against Mr. Trump, but she was not willing to dismiss them.“It just seems like there’s a lot there,” she said. “I’m not a lawyer. I haven’t studied up, but I am worried.”Still, it is perhaps no coincidence that the two Republican candidates who were most ready to raise the prospect of conviction — Mr. Hutchinson and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — were seeing single digits or worse in national polling of Republican primary voters before Mr. Christie dropped out of the race on Wednesday.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey suspended his candidacy for president during an event in Windham, N.H., on Thursday.Sophie Park for The New York TimesIn his farewell speech in New Hampshire, Mr. Christie returned to the moment in the August Republican primary debate when almost all the candidates on the stage raised their hand when asked if they would vote for Mr. Trump even if he were a convicted criminal.“I want you to imagine for a second if Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams and Washington were frankly sitting here tonight,” he said. “Do you think they could imagine that the country they risked their lives to create would actually be having a conversation about whether a convicted criminal should be president of the United States?”Yet that conversation continues.In an interview on Friday with The Des Moines Register and NBC News, Ms. Haley danced around the prospects of a conviction for nearly three minutes: “He’s innocent until he’s proven guilty,” she said. “He’ll have to figure that out. I don’t have to deal with those court cases.”Mr. DeSantis has been nudging toward acknowledging the danger. In an interview last month with the conservative radio personality Hugh Hewitt, he blamed Mr. Trump’s legal jeopardy on liberals out to get him: “I think it’s very difficult for a Republican, much less Donald Trump, to get a fair shake in front of a D.C. jury,” he said.But as he has made his case against Mr. Trump more aggressively ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Mr. DeSantis has adjusted that argument.“We’re taking a huge risk by empowering a jury of, probably an all-Democrat jury in the nation’s capital, the most Democrat area in the country, to pass a judgment,” he said in the NBC News interview, “because obviously if they rule against him, if they have a verdict against him, that’s going to hurt us in the election.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Winners and Losers From the Fifth Republican Debate in Iowa

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      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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      Christie’s Exit Should Give Haley a Chance in New Hampshire. Will It Be Enough?

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      A group of moderate voters is now available, but it may not put her over the top against Trump.Chris Christie and Nikki Haley on a debate stage last month.Gerald Herbert/Associated PressEight years ago, Chris Christie gave Donald J. Trump the biggest political assist of the 2016 campaign.He eviscerated a surging Marco Rubio on the debate stage just days before the New Hampshire primary. In doing so, he ensured that the Republican mainstream would be divided and allowed Mr. Trump to regain his footing with a win after a loss in Iowa.Mr. Trump won’t be getting the same favor again.On Wednesday, Mr. Christie withdrew from the race. Whatever his intent, by bowing out he has effectively done what he didn’t do eight years ago: step out of the way of a mainstream conservative with moderate appeal, in this case Nikki Haley, who is surging heading into the New Hampshire primary.In the most recent polls, she reached about 30 percent of the vote in New Hampshire. It was a tally that put her within striking distance of Mr. Trump and even made a victory imaginable. But she still trailed by about 12 percentage points, and her path to victory remained quite narrow.With Mr. Christie out of the race, those 12 points don’t look so hard anymore. Mr. Christie has held around 10 percent of the vote in New Hampshire for months, and Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump would essentially be tied in New Hampshire if her support were hypothetically combined with Mr. Christie’s.According to FiveThirtyEight on Wednesday night, Ms. Haley and Mr. Christie’s support added up to 41.5 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, to 42.4 percent for Mr. Trump.Of course, not every one of Mr. Christie’s voters will back Ms. Haley. But in this particular case, there’s good reason to think the preponderance of his voters really will coalesce behind her.Mr. Christie is the only vocal anti-Trump candidate and, not surprisingly, his supporters are the likeliest to be anti-Trump. In a CNN/UNH poll this week, 65 percent of Mr. Christie’s supporters said Ms. Haley was their second choice. In a CBS/YouGov poll last month, 75 percent of Mr. Christie’s supporters in New Hampshire said they would consider Ms. Haley. Just 9 percent said they would consider Mr. Trump.With these numbers, Ms. Haley’s path to victory isn’t like hitting an inside straight — it is fairly straightforward. No, the Christie vote, alone, will probably not be enough. But she has been steadily gaining in the polls and, historically, there’s a lot of precedent for surging candidates to keep gaining — especially over a contest’s final days. With Mr. Trump at just 42 percent of the vote, there’s no reason to think her path is closed off.Of course, a Haley win in New Hampshire would not mean that Mr. Trump’s path to the nomination was in jeopardy. Not even Mr. Christie seems optimistic about her chances; he was heard on a hot mic Wednesday saying “she’s going to get smoked,” presumably referring to Ms. Haley, and he did not endorse her.Her appeal is concentrated among highly educated and moderate voters, who represent an outsize share of the electorate in New Hampshire. She also depends on the support of registered independents — in some other key primary contests, they are not eligible to vote. Back in 2016, moderate candidates who went nowhere nationally — John Kasich, Mr. Christie and Jeb Bush — added up to 34 percent of the vote in New Hampshire. If you add the 11 percent held by Mr. Rubio, a mainstream conservative, that’s 45 percent of the vote that went for establishment candidates. In other words, this state is not representative of the Republican electorate.But this time, the voters who backed those moderate Republicans will have a chance to coalesce behind a single candidate and, in doing so, deal a blow to Mr. Trump. The consequences may mostly prove to be symbolic: a rare Republican rebuke of Mr. Trump and a reminder that the old mainstream of the Republican Party remains to be reckoned with.But there is a chance, albeit a small one, that a Haley win in New Hampshire would prove to be more important. Mr. Trump may face criminal trials in the months ahead. While it seems exceedingly unlikely today, an erosion of his aura of dominance might make him ever so slightly more vulnerable if a trial gets underway. More

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      With Chris Christie Out, Nikki Haley Is Poised to Benefit in New Hampshire

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      Ms. Haley has cut into former President Donald J. Trump’s lead in the state where Mr. Christie had spent significant time wooing voters opposed to Mr. Trump.The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s decision on Wednesday to drop out of the presidential race shook up a contest for the Republican nomination that had appeared to be former President Donald J. Trump’s for the taking, giving a huge shot of adrenaline to Nikki Haley just five days before ballots begin to be cast in the monthslong nomination fight.The most obviously altered battleground is likely to be New Hampshire, where Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and Mr. Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, is within striking distance of the former president. Even without his endorsement, many New Hampshire voters who planned to side with Mr. Christie as an opponent of Mr. Trump’s are likely to flip to Ms. Haley, as is potentially some of Mr. Christie’s leadership team.But the jolt will have much broader implications, argued John Sununu, a former New Hampshire senator and the brother of the current governor, Chris Sununu, both of whom have endorsed Ms. Haley. A contest that has centered on Mr. Trump’s return and the fight between Ms. Haley and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for second place will now focus squarely on the threat Ms. Haley poses to Mr. Trump’s coronation.A memo that Mr. Trump’s campaign blasted out after Christie’s announcement on Wednesday night did just that, broadcasting what it called internal polling that showed Mr. Trump beating Ms. Haley in a head-to-head contest 56 percent to 40 percent.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

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      Will You Vote for Trump Again?

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      Jesse Gutierres believes only one Republican candidate will restore confidence in the economy.Kelly Nieuwenhuis wants to move beyond the chaos.Shannon Demastus wants a president she can be proud of.Will You Vote for Trump Again?It’s the question weighing on Republicans across the country. But Iowans get to decide first. We listened as they grappled with their choices.Jan. 11, 2024There is no way around it: The Iowa caucuses on Monday, the kickoff of the 2024 presidential election, are not really about competing visions for the future of the Republican Party. They are not a battle between dueling ideologies or policy priorities or America’s role in the world.They revolve around one man, the gravitational center of Republican politics for nearly a decade: the former — and perhaps future — President Donald J. Trump.Republicans are in the throes of deciding whether they want Mr. Trump to continue his total dominance over their party. Do they want four more years of his brand of personality-driven, divisive and combative politics? Do they see him as a victim, or as a demagogue? Are they willing to risk nominating a candidate facing 91 charges and who could be a felon come Election Day?Polling shows Republicans are preparing to take the leap; Mr. Trump appears to likely win in Iowa. But the numbers don’t capture the ambivalence and anxiety weighing on many as they grapple with their decisions.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

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      Caucus de Iowa: esto es lo que puede esperarse la noche del lunes

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      Quien se impone en las primarias republicanas de Iowa no siempre gana la nominación presidencial del partido. Los candidatos intentarán derrotar a sus oponentes y superar las expectativas.Pareciera haber pocas dudas sobre quién probablemente ganará el caucus presidencial republicano en Iowa el lunes.Pero en Iowa, lo inesperado puede ser lo esperado y una victoria no siempre es una victoria. El resultado podría moldear el futuro del Partido Republicano en un momento de transición, así como el futuro de los caucus de Iowa después de una década difícil. Podría ayudar a determinar si Nikki Haley, quien fungió como embajadora de Estados Unidos, representa un obstáculo serio para el regreso de Donald Trump al poder o si Ron DeSantis, el gobernador de Florida, se verá obligado a abandonar la contienda.A continuación, una guía de algunos resultados posibles y lo que significan para los contendientes:Una victoria de TrumpTodas las suposiciones que anticipan una gran noche para Trump significan que el mayor contrincante que el expresidente tendría que vencer podrían ser las expectativas y no sus dos principales rivales en las boletas, Haley y DeSantis. Trump y su campaña han puesto el listón muy alto. Trump se ha postulado como si fuera el presidente en funciones, sin siquiera debatir con sus oponentes. Sus asesores dicen que creen que puede establecer un récord para una contienda abierta si termina al menos 12 puntos por delante de su rival más cercano.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

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      Haley and DeSantis Summon the Right Fury for the Wrong Target

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      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