Republican primary debate moderator Megyn Kelly came out swinging with her first questions to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
Kelly first went to DeSantis, pointing out that his campaign and the super PAC supporting him have spent the most money, yet he has gone down in the polls.
She further noted that he had “a wave of momentum” coming off his big win in the Florida governor’s race last fall and was seen as the candidate who could consolidate the non-Trump vote in the GOP.
“But here we are a month out from the first real votes, and you haven’t managed to do it,” she said.
“In fact, Nikki Haley is beating you in New Hampshire and South Carolina now and closing in on you in Iowa,” Kelly added. Ouch!
She kept twisting the knife, highlighting that Trump is beating DeSantis in Florida by over 30 percentage points.
“Is it fair to say … voters are telling you ‘not no, but not now’?” Kelly asked.
What kind of question was that?
The first question from the NewsNation debate came from Megyn Kelly, telling DeSantis to get out of the race.
And when he started speaking, NewsNation had the audio from his mic all messed up. pic.twitter.com/17CW5I0p1n— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) December 7, 2023
DeSantis responded, “We have a great idea in America that the voters actually make these decisions, not pundits or pollsters.”
He noted that the polls didn’t predict the magnitude of his win in Florida, which he said was the greatest in state history for a Republican.
Kelly then turned her fire to Haley, dinging her for close ties to big corporations like Boeing and support from BlackRock hedge fund manager Larry Fink, the king of ESG.
“Aren’t you too tight with the banks and the billionaires to win over the GOP’s working-class base, which mostly wants to break the system, not elect someone beholden to it?” Kelly asked.
Megyn Kelly: “Aren’t you too tight with the banks and the billionaires to win over the GOP’s working class base?”
Nikki Haley: “We will take support from anybody. I don’t ask them what their policies are, they ask me what my policies are.” pic.twitter.com/WQWRbtwIX4
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) December 7, 2023
Haley was forthright in her response.
“We will take support from anybody we can take support from, but I have been a conservative fighter all my life,” she said.
“I don’t ask them what their policies are; they ask me what my policies are,” she added.
The former governor further noted that she was just endorsed by the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, which, it should be noted, is funded in part by billionaire Charles Koch.
Finally, Kelly went after Ramaswamy for being a chameleon, playing the know-it-all in the first debate, playing nice in the second, and then coming out swinging in the third.
Megyn Kelly pointing out that Vivek changes his personality in every debate is hilarious and exactly true.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) December 7, 2023
Kelly came to play ball, and she’s clearly going for each of the candidate’s weakest points, pushing them to defend that ground.
Wednesday night’s debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is the final showdown between the Republican candidates not named Trump before the Iowa caucuses in January.
