National Security at the Republican Debate (Part 3)

Israel, Ukraine, China and military force in Mexico

On November 8th, the US Republican Party held their third debate for presidential hopefuls. Included in the list of questions were items about the Israel-Hamas war, support for Ukraine, defending Taiwan against a Chinese attack and the possibility of using military force against Mexican cartels. Below are the transcripts from those portions of the event.

Participants in the debate were Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie and Tim Scott.

Disclaimer: I have made minor edits to the text below in the form of excluding banter and consolidating text when interruptions occurred. Hopefully this makes it easier to consume the thought of the candidate on each item. Candidates also tended to veer from the original question to get into other items they wished to talk about. I left those aspects in for overall context rather than selectively choose to remove certain portions.

Finally, the below is not intended as an endorsement of any position, candidate or political party. I plan to also pull out the national security discussions from Democratic and eventually the presidential debates so we can all see how the candidates feel about these specific issues.

Full transcript can be found here: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/rnc-third-republican-presidential-primary-debate-transcript

Full debate video on Fox News website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dmXJ99oC4k

Israel-Hamas War

Lester Hold (Moderator): As President of the United States, what would you be urging Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do at this moment?

DeSantis: I would be telling Bibi, finish the job once and for all with these butchers, Hamas, their terrorists, their massacring innocent people. They would wipe every Jew off the globe if they could. He cannot live with that threat right by his country. That Hamas should release every hostage and they should unconditionally surrender. I’m sick of hearing the media, I’m sick of hearing other people blame Israel just for defending itself. We will stand with Israel in word and indeed in public and in private. And I can tell you as governor, I actually did something about it. Biden’s neglect has been atrocious, we had Floridians that were over there after the attack. He left them stranded. They couldn’t get flights out. So I scrambled resources in Florida. I sent planes over to Israel and I brought back over 700 people to safety. There could have been more hostages had we not acted. And I’ll tell you this, I met the first planeload when they came to Florida and one of the mothers pointed to a six-year-old daughter. And she said, “My daughter had been saying the last two nights, mommy, I don’t want to hear any more bombs, no more rockets. I just want to get back to Florida.” So there’s a difference between words and deeds, we acted and we save lives.

Haley: The first thing I said to him when it happened was I said, finish them. Finish them. And the reason is I worked on this every day when I was at the United Nations and we have to remember that they have to one, eliminate Hamas, two support Israel with whatever they need, whenever they need it. And three, make sure we bring our hostages home. We need to be very clear-eyed to know there would be no Hamas without Iran, there would be no Hezbollah without Iran. There would not be the Houthis without Iran and there wouldn’t be the Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq that are trying to hit our military men and women if it hadn’t been for Iran. And who is funding Iran, right now? China is buying oil from Iran, Russia is getting drones and missiles from Iran and there is an unholy alliance. We need to be clear-eyed. The last thing we need to do is to tell Israel what to do. The only thing we should be doing is supporting them in eliminating Hamas. It is not that Israel needs America, America needs Israel. They are the tip of the spear when it comes to this Islamic terrorism and we need to make sure that we have their backs in that process.

Ramaswamy: In terms of what I would tell the Prime Minister, no. In fact I would go one step further, the founding vision of Israel was based on the idea that they don’t want to depend on anybody else’s sympathy or direction in defending themselves. So what I would tell Bibi is that Israel has the right and the responsibility to defend itself. I would tell him to smoke those terrorists on his southern border and then I’ll tell him as President of the United States, I’ll be smoking the terrorists on our southern border. That’s his responsibility, this is our responsibility. That’s how we move forward. But I want to be careful to avoid making the mistakes from the NeoCon establishment of the past. Corrupt politicians in both parties spent trillions, killed millions, made billions for themselves in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting wars that sent 1000s of our sons and daughters, people my age to die in wars that did not advance anyone’s interests. Adding $7 trillion to our national debt. And Joe Biden sold off our foreign policy. Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden got a $5 million bribe from Ukraine, that’s why we’re sending $200 billion back to that same country. The fact of the matter is the Republican Party is not that much better. You have the likes of Nikki Haley who stepped down from her time at the UN, bankrupt or in debt was her family. Then she becomes a military contractor, she joins the board of Boeing and otherwise and is now a multi-millionaire. So I think that that’s wrong when Republicans do it or Democrats do it. That’s the choice we face. Do you want a leader from a different generation who’s going to put this country first or do you want Dick Cheney in three inch heels? In which case, we’ve got two of them on stage tonight.

Scott: Well, number one, I would tell Prime Minister Netanyahu, not only do you have the responsibility and the right to wipe Hamas off of the map, we will support you, we will be there with you, we’ll stand shoulder to shoulder. There will be no daylight. But I would change the station a little bit though and head back home to America. I would say to President Biden, diplomacy only is a weak strategy, appeasement leads to war. From President Obama to President Biden, Obama sent millions to Iran, frankly, president Biden has hit billions to Iran. That is why I said that there’s blood dripping from the hands of President Obama and President Biden. I would tell President Biden with great clarity, if you want to stop the 40 plus attacks on military personnel in the Middle East, you have to strike in Iran. If you want to make a difference. You cannot just continue to have strikes in Syria on warehouses, you actually have to cut off the head of the snake and the head of the snake is Iran and not simply their proxies. In order for us to have a powerful response from America, we have to be in a position of strength. As President of the United States, my foreign policy is simple, you cannot negotiate with evil, you have to destroy it.

Christie: Look Lester, these problems are so big and serious that the first thing I would say to Prime Minister Netanyahu is pretty simple, America is here no matter what it is you need at any time to preserve the state of Israel. Remember that Hamas’ main goal is to get rid of Israel. Is to get Israel absolutely off the map, now there are three things I think I would say to him when he asked for advice. The first I would say is that it is absolutely your obligation to protect the territorial integrity of Israel. Secondly, to make sure you protect the security and the safety of your people. Every time something happens to compromise either one of those things, it creates greater unrest in the entire region. Second, you must go in and make sure that Hamas can never do this again. The fact is that Israel and their intelligence community failed. They failed here and they failed the people of the state of Israel. And so we need to work closely and better together to make sure one, that they’re degraded and two, that we know everything that’s going on inside the Gaza Strip when it’s going on so that something like this can’t happen to kill 1400 individuals again. And the third thing is to keep your eye on the ball, make sure that we continue to isolate Iran, work with the reasonable nations in the Middle East, the other Arab nations who want to partner with you and make sure that we continue to isolate Iran so that their only friends in the world are the part of the evil foursome, China we Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Military Force Against Iran

Matthew Brooks (CEO of Republican Jewish Convention): Given attacks by Iranian backed proxy groups on US military bases in Syria and Iraq, attacks that have wounded approximately two dozen of our US servicemen. Do you support the use of military force by the United States against Iran?

Haley: What we need to be doing for Iraq and Syria is first of all, the idea that our men and women could be targeted and that we’ve allowed almost 100 hits to happen under Biden’s watch is unthinkable. We need to understand this is Iran giving the green light telling them what to do and we shouldn’t be doing the tit for tat like what Joe Biden has done. We need to go and take out their infrastructure that they are using to make those strikes with so they can never do it again. Iran responds to strength, you punch them one and you punch them hard and they will back off. But what we don’t need is Biden falling all over himself to get back in the Iran deal. Him giving $6 billion to get five hostages home, him telling Netanyahu now that he needs a pause or a ceasefire. We don’t need him going and sitting there tiptoeing around Iran because he thinks they’re going to do something. You don’t respond to an enemy and a terrorist with fear, you respond with strength. When you do that, that’s when the world pays attention and that’s when Iran stops.

Desantis: I actually served in Iraq back in the day and we had Al-Qaeda in Iraq, you had Shia militias that were funded by Iran that were killing 100s and 100s of US troops. And as commander-in-chief, I am not going to put our troops in harm’s way unless you’re willing to defend them with everything you have. Biden has a out there, they’re sitting ducks, he’s doing glancing blows, that’s just inviting more attacks from the Iranians. I would say you harm a hair on the head of an American service member and you are going to have hell to pay. We are not just going to sit there and let our service members be sitting ducks. And that’s true whether it’s Iran or whether it’s any country on the world. We have to be strong and we have to defend the people who defend us.

Support for Ukraine

Kristen Welker (Moderator): Where do you stand on more funding for Ukraine?

Scott: I certainly have been very supportive of Ukraine. I believe that ultimately we should make sure that the President of the United States states what is America’s national vital interest in Ukraine. It is actually in degrading the Russian military. We’ve been very effective using our resources and our weaponry and the incredibly high price of Ukrainian blood to achieve that objective. Every day we get closer to the degradation of the Russian military, and that’s good news. But the American people are frustrated that they do not have a president who reminds us and tells us, where’s the accountability? How are those dollars being spent? We need those answers for us to continue to see the support for Ukraine. And at the same time, I would say that a package that’s been offered by the president for Ukraine and Israel, that’s the wrong approach. We need to focus specifically on providing Israel with the $14 billion that they need so that we show the world that we are 100% undeniably standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel. And then as we turn away from that direct support for Israel, we should go to our southern border and close our southern border with the resources necessary. I believe that we have sleeper terrorist cells in America. Thousands of people have come from Yemen, Iran, Syria, and Iraq. If we are going to deal with the national security emergency at our border, we have to do it now. Bottom line is we have to first have the level of accountability that allows the American people to understand where the resources have gone, number one. Number two, after we have that responsibility taken care of and accountability, then we have an opportunity to look at the overall strategy that helps us to grade the Russian military while we use our resources. And frankly, keeping our NATO partners safe from the Russian military is absolutely essential. As you understand, Article 5 would require to support and to defend NATO, our troops in the ground. The fastest way for us to eliminate that possibility is for us to destroy possible the Russian military. By doing so, we actually achieve the objective of keeping our military home, and that’s good news.

Ramaswamy: I’m absolutely unpersuaded and I’m actually enjoying watching the Ukraine hawks quietly, delicately tiptoe back from their position as this thing has unwound into a disaster. The first half of this race, I was the only person standing for it. Now, they’re actually quietly coming around to being more cautious as they should. Level with the American people here. Ukraine is not a paragon of democracy. This is a country that has banned 11 opposition parties. It has consolidated all media into one state TV media arm. That’s not democratic. It has threatened not to hold elections this year unless the U.S. forks over more money. That is not democratic. It has celebrated a Nazi in its ranks, the comedian in cargo pants, a man called Zelensky. Doing it in their own ranks, that is not democratic. More facts for you that you won’t hear from the mainstream in either party or the mainstream media. The regions of Ukraine that are occupied by Russia right now, the Donbass, Luhansk, Donetsk, these are Russian-speaking regions that have not even been part of Ukraine since 2014, that other people probably couldn’t name those provinces for you. Those are the hard facts. And so to frame this as some kind of battle between good versus evil, don’t buy it. And I’d like the likes of the sharpest of the war hawks on Ukraine, Nikki Haley, to have some accountability and answer. Do you want to use U.S. taxpayer money to fund the banning of Christians? That is actually what’s happening. They’re using the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. They have banned them. The Ukrainian Parliament just did this last week supported by our dollars, and I think you owe it to the American people, Nikki, to at least this one time condemn- (cut off by other candidates)

Haley: The first thing I’ll tell you is we all remember what that thug did when he invaded Ukraine. We all know that half a million people have died because of Putin, and here is a freedom loving, pro-American country that is fighting for its survival and its democracy. No, I don’t think we should give them cash. I think we should give them the equipment and the ammunition to win. And I’ll tell you, if Biden had done it when they first asked for it, this war would be over. But let’s also remember this. When you left Afghanistan in shambles and left them with a ton of weapons and money, it’s not that we left, it’s how we left. When you look at Ukraine, don’t think for a second, now everybody wants to move away from Ukraine, they’ll want to move away from Israel a year from now. America can never be so arrogant to think we don’t need friends. After 9/11, we needed a lot of friends. Now is the time to get partnerships. This unholy alliance between Russia, Ukraine and China is real. There is a reason the Taiwanese want us to support the Ukrainians. It’s because they know that China’s coming after them next. There is a reason Ukrainians want us to support Israelis because they know that if Iran wins, Russia wins. We have to see the combination of the three.

Christie: Kristen, let’s remember the last time that we turned our back on a shooting war in Europe. It bought us just a couple of years and then 500,000 Americans were killed in Europe to defeat Hitler. This is not a choice. This is the price we pay for being the leaders of the free world. And the fact is this alliance is not just with Russia and China. Governor Haley knows this. Iran is in the middle of this as well, and so is North Korea and they are all working to support Russia right now. And the reason they’re doing it is because dictators work together. People who believe in democracy work together. We must stand with all of those that are standing up for democracy and freedom in this world. And by the way, let’s remind everybody of this. In 1992, this country made a promise to Ukraine. We said if you return nuclear missiles that were part of the old Soviet Union to Russia and they invade you, we will protect you. An American promise that’s 31 years old is no different than American promise that’s made tonight on this stage. We need to stand by it. And those of us who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

DeSantis: Well, any suggestion by Zelensky or anyone else that we’re going to eventually have U.S. troops there, I can tell the American people when I’m president, that will not happen. We are not going to send your sons and daughters to Ukraine. I am going to send troops to our southern border. If you look at the threats that we face, terrorists have come in through our southern border. I’m going to shut it down. I’m going to have the military and I’m going to deport the people who’ve come, particularly under Biden, who’ve come from the Middle East, come from all these places. Now, Biden wants $105 billion. 60, most of that’s Ukraine, including some of it going to pay pensions for bureaucrats and salaries. That is a totally ridiculous use of American tax dollars. He says he has money for border to try to do, and the media repeat that. When you look at it, what most of the money is money to process more illegal aliens into this country. How is that solving the problem? That’s making the problem worse. And what does he do for the Indo-Pacific? A pittance. That is the top threat that we face. We need to bring this war to an end. We need the Europeans to step up and do their fair share and we need to get serious about the top threat that this country faces, which is the Chinese Communist Party.

US Navy Strength and Protecting Taiwan

Hugh Hewitt (Moderator): His (Trump’s) goal was a 355 ship Navy. That’s what he pushed for. He got to 300, it’s now at 291. Is that big enough to deter and if necessary, defeat an invasion of Taiwan?

Haley: China has the largest naval fleet in the world. They have 350 ships. They’ll have 400 ships in two years. We won’t even have 350 ships in two decades. China has built up their military. It’s not just land, air, and sea. They’re doing cyber, they’re doing artificial intelligence, they’re doing space. America needs to modernize our military. We need to do everything we can. The first thing is you go and you make sure you have the backs of Ukraine. That’s why the Taiwanese want us to support Ukraine because they know that sends the biggest message to China. The second thing is we go to China and we start being tough on them. No more sales of our American soil to China and let’s take back what they’ve already stolen. Then you go to the universities. No more having millions of dollars go to our universities. Then we will go and end all formal trade relations with China until they stop murdering Americans from fentanyl, something Ron has yet to say that he’s going to do. And then we modernize our military. When we strengthen our military, when we modernize it with the focus of cyber, artificial intelligence, and space, when we make sure that we have the backs of our friends, whether it’s in Israel, whether it’s in Ukraine, and we should be arming Taiwan. Make sure they have the equipment they need, make sure they have the training they need now. There is nothing China fears more than knowing that America will have Taiwan’s back. Let’s make sure that we show it by making sure they have the equipment they need.

DeSantis: Not enough. We have to have the ability to back up a strategy of denial of President Xi’s ambitions. And if China’s able to be the world’s leading superpower that will affect you and your family in ways that are going to be very bad. They will export authoritarianism all around the world as the cost of doing business. They will impose things like social credit scores and internet monitoring. So this is to this generation what the Soviet Union was to the post-World War II generation. I’ve already released a plan. We’re going to get to 355 ships at the end of the first term, 385 ships at the end of the second term, but we’re going to have a path to 600 ships over the next 20 years. I think the future of freedom is going to be determined in the Indo-Pacific. We have a strategy, not just military, but decoupling from the economy and fighting them here at home with our cultural. Ambassador Haley said somehow I wasn’t doing. She welcomed them into South Carolina, gave them land near a military base, wrote the Chinese ambassador a love letter saying what a great friend they were. That was like their number one way to do economic development. In Florida, I banned China from buying land in this state and we kicked out on our universities and we kicked the Confucius institutes out of our universities. We’ve recognized the threat and we’ve acted swiftly and decisively.

Scott: Well, two major problems with the question. Number one, we do not have currently a defense industrial bank to allow us to have the kind of production that we need in order to keep America safe. Frankly, if we are not prepared to fight and engage in three continents at the same time, think about where we are today. In the Middle East, we are in the midst of trying to back our strongest ally. In Eastern Europe, we’ve seen our resources and our weaponry help degrade the Russian military. The Indo-Pacific, we have real challenges. The long-term threat, the long-term threat is China. Immediate threat is our southern border. In order for us to have the military to fight three different continents at the exact same time, we are going to have to invest heavily in our military, but we’re also going to have to invest heavily in an industrial base so that we can hit our objectives from a military perspective, not only with our ships, but also with our planes. We are so old as a military that in order for us to recalibrate, we’re going to have to invest. One of the things I do in my Made in America strategy is we create more than 4 million new jobs by having high-tech manufacturing come back to America, decoupling from China so that we focus our attention on creating that industrial revolution that will be necessary for us to achieve the goal of having a military that is ready to be lethal and come home safely.

Ramaswamy: First answer is end the toxic divest to invest program. For people who don’t know about that, we’re decommissioning ships in the South China Sea. The foundation of war is economics. Rebuild our defense industrial base at home. But here’s the dirty little secret. Our actual defense industrial base depends on China for the supply chain, for the F-35 jets, for the ships that we’re building. Think about this, why are we stockpiling that if it isn’t to actually be strong against our enemy, China? We depend on them for that, just like we depend on them for pharmaceuticals, just like we depend on them for semiconductors. So here’s why we can’t get tough with China. It’s because we depend on them for our modern way of life and we have to declare economic independence from our enemy. That’s the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson at the age of 33 would’ve signed. And today if you were alive, that’s the Declaration of Independence that I will sign as the next president. I do have to recognize that Ron DeSantis was correct about acknowledging Nikki Haley’s tough talk when she was ambassador to the UN, calling China our great friend, bringing the CCP to South Carolina. What he left out though, Ron, and be honest about it, there was a lobbying based exemption in that bill that allowed Chinese nationals to buy land within a 20-mile radius of a military base lobbied for by one of your donors. So I think we have to call a spade a spade. We need politicians who are independent of the forces that increase our dependence on China. My message to Xi Jinping is this, you are done buying land in this country. You will not donate to universities in this country. U.S. businesses won’t expand into the Chinese market until you play by the same set of rules. I think that we need to increase our naval capacity by at least 20% over the course of the next several years and be able to meet our AUKUS agreement standards. Right now, we are at risk of not even being able to meet our AUKUS standards with Australia and the UK. So what we need to do is have a plan that reverses the trajectory of the divest to invest program by 20% over the next three years.

Christie: I know China is the enemy and that’s what we should be focused on. So let’s be really clear. The nuclear submarines in this United States Navy is the greatest deterrent to Chinese aggression, and that is the first place I would go to increase American naval power. Our nuclear submarines are able to move stealthily, quietly, and effectively. And if we are going to deter China from invading Taiwan, the only way we’re going to do it is to make sure that they don’t know whether how many nuclear submarines from the United States of America are in the South China Sea and in that area and ready to strike on them if they decide to move on Taiwan. And so we as our first priority, need to go directly to our nuclear sub-program, Hugh, and we need to increase it drastically. That would be priority number one. Ships would come next, but to me the ships are secondary choice here. The submarines are the single most important thing that we could be using to deter China. But the other thing we could do to deter China is to let them know that the blood money they’re spending for Russia in Ukraine right now will not be effective. That we send Putin home with his tail between his legs and make them understand that the same fate waits for them if they decide to move towards Taiwan with a more aggressive nuclear subprogram, we’ll be able to make that threat real.

Southern Border and Military Action Against Mexico

Hewitt: What can you do as Commander in Chief on the first day to stop fentanyl and the waterfall of it into this country?

Scott: Well, number one, we should close our southern border. For $10 billion we could close our southern border. For an additional $5 billion, we could use the currently available military technology to surveil our southern border to stop fentanyl from crossing our border. I’ve already led on legislation that would sanction the Mexican cartels. If you remember the path, the precursors come from China, then they are manufactured in Mexican labs, and then the Mexican cartels bring them across our border. By sanctioning their accounts and eliminating their cash, we starve them of what they need. Number one, closing our southern border makes it nearly impossible to get in. The military grade technology is a backup, making sure that we not only stop 70,000 deaths in the last 12 months because of fentanyl. It also allows us to deal with the human trafficking travesty that is entering in our country in the same path. If we are going to deal effectively With a hundred thousand overdose deaths in our country and the 70,000 that is directly linked to fentanyl, we have to deal with our ports of entry and deal with our southern border. If we do that effectively, we have started to reducing the challenge from the outside and then we have to deal with the challenge on the inside, which seems to be connected to a mental health crisis that is spreading throughout our nation.

Christie: It can be done quickly in two ways, Hugh, on fentanyl. The first way is exactly as you suggest that ports of entry, we have to beef up what our law enforcement has in terms of technology. I would invest in that as president. We need to make sure that law enforcement has every tool at its disposal to do it. Secondly, on day one, I would sign an executive order that would send the National Guard to partner with Customs and Border Patrol, both at ports of entry and at the open ports of our border. Customs and Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed. There’s 200,000 encounters a month over the last 11 months. We simply do not have the man and woman power at the border to be able to deal with it. And so dealing with both law enforcement and you’re right, we have done this, we can do this, but we got to give them the tools to do it and technology is one of the biggest tools that we don’t have enough of at the ports of entry. Now, we also need to lower demand, Hugh, in this country. And the way to lower demand is to start treating people again. We started to do this before COVID and we haven’t done enough of it. And for every family out there tonight who has lost a loved one to fentanyl or to any other type of opioid overdose, what you know is all you want is a chance for them to win their lives back. When I’m president of the United States, we’re going to call this what it is. It is a disease like heart disease, diabetes, or any other disease like cancer that can be treated, should be treated. We not only have to stop supply, but we have to lower demand and save lives.

DeSantis: Well, first I was speaking to a dad who lost a son to fentanyl overdose. Son wasn’t a drug addict, he had taken some pill that happened to be laced with fentanyl and it was a fatal overdose. And when he told me, obviously the pain of losing a child is as bad as it gets, but he said what was salt in the wounds is that these elites in DC don’t give a damn about what’s going on in this country. They don’t care that we have tens of thousands of opioid deaths, that the fentanyl’s pouring in. They are not taking the type of action we need to. We’re declaring it a national emergency on day one. I’m sending US military to the border. I’m going to stop the invasion cold. I am going to deport people who came illegally and I’m even going to build the border wall and have Mexico pay for it like Donald Trump promised. How are you going to do it? Yeah, Mexico’s not going to fork over money. We’re going to impose fees on the remittances that foreign workers send to foreign countries. We’ll raise billions of dollars, I’ll build a wall. But we are going to designate the cartels to be foreign terrorist organizations or something similar to that and we’re going to authorize the use of deadly force. We’re going to have maritime operations to interdict precursor chemicals going into Mexico. But I’ll tell you this, if someone in the drug cartels is sneaking fentanyl across the border when I’m president, that’s going to be the last thing they do. We’re going to shoot them stone cold dead

Haley: I’ll tell you is first of all, you have to go to the source. We have lost more Americans in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars combined. We lost 75,000 Americans last year. Go to the source. It is the reason why we’ll continue to say we will end all normal trade relations with China until they stop murdering Americans. You watch how quick that flow stops. The second thing is we’ll send special operations in to take out the cartels. We need to go to where they’re distributing it, where the supply centers are and take them out. We’ll put 25,000 more Border Patrol and ICE agents on the ground and let them do their job. We will defund sanctuary cities. We will go back to the Remain in Mexico policy so that everybody stays in Mexico and they never get here in the first place. And instead of catch and deport, we’ll go to catch and release. I’m sorry, instead of catch and release, we’ll go to catch and deport. That is the way we’ll deal with the border. Those are the things that we have to do going forward. But I do agree with Chris. One of the first things that we have to do is really focus on mental health and addiction centers. It is something that is needed in our country terribly because we don’t deal with mental health and someone who doesn’t get care for mental health falls into addiction and we owe it to them to treat it like the cancer that it is.

Ramaswamy: One thing I just want to say in how we’re talking about this issue is, like Ron, I’ve actually met many parents across this country who have lost their kids to laced pharmaceuticals that have fentanyl in them. That is not an overdose, that is poisoning. If you put that fentanyl in a Big Mac, we would not call that an overdose. You’d call it what it is. It’s closer to bio-terrorism. And I say that because as it uniquely relates to this crisis, that does warrant more aggressive means to deal with it. So there’s a new presidential election in Mexico in 2024. People may not be aware of that. It’s going to be someone other than Obrador, who has been a disaster in Mexico. I think he’s even mentioned me obliquely in speeches to say that somebody who would do this shouldn’t get anywhere near the White House. Well, AMLO, get out of the way. There’s going to be someone else in charge. I hope to build a good relationship with that next president of Mexico. We’ll use our own military to seal our own southern border. What we need to do is stop using our military to protect somebody else’s border halfway around the world when we’re short right here at home, get serious about protecting this border. And then the other thing that hasn’t been discussed is the northern border. I’m the only candidate on the stage as far as I’m aware, who has actually visited the northern border. There was enough fentanyl that was captured just on the northern border last year to kill 3 million Americans. So we got to just skate to where the puck is going, not just where the puck is. Don’t just build the wall, build both walls. Can’t just complete the wall. Use the military to seal the Swiss cheese for the tunnels that they’re actually building underneath that wall-