National Security at the Republican Debate Pt. 2

On September 27th, the US Republican Party held their second debate for presidential hopefuls. The format was a bit different this time around. Rather than one question for the group, the moderators asked specific questions of each candidate. In turn, not all were able to share their stances on the below topics.

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

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://thepavlovictoday.com/read-second-republican-debate-transcript-september-27-2023/

Full debate video on Fox News website: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6337443912112

Cartels in Mexico

CALDERON (Moderator):  According to Customs and Border Protection, about 90 percent of fentanyl is seized at official border crossings, and 57 percent of the smugglers are U.S. citizens.

How would you stop fentanyl brought into the country, mostly by U.S. citizens through ports of entry?

DESANTIS:  That is why — everything he said I agree with.  That is why, as commander-in-chief, I’m going to use the U.S. military to go after the Mexican drug cartels.  They are killing our people.  And the stories that I’ve seen, in Florida, we had an infant, 18 months, parents rented an Airbnb.  And apparently the people that had rented before were using drugs.  The infant was crawling — the toddler was crawling on the carpet and ingested fentanyl residue and died.  

Are we just going to sit here and let this happen, this carnage happen in our country?  I am not going to do that.  So I guarantee you, on day one, this border is going to be a day one issue for me as president.  We’re going to declare it a national emergency.  Yes, we’ll build the wall.  We’ll do “remain in Mexico.” But those Mexican drug cartels are going to be treated like the foreign terrorist organizations that they are.  

CALDERON: … Mexico’s president called who supports sending U.S. military into the country “scoundrels.”

Mexico is the United States’ most important trade partner in border security. You say you will send special operations to attack the cartels in Mexico. So, this means boots on the ground, drone strikes?

HALEY: It means special operations. It’s how we deal with our terrorists. And what you need to do is understand that Mexico’s not being a good partner if we lost 75,000 Americans last year. Mexico’s not being a good partner if they’re letting the cartels get away with what they’re getting away with.

What we will do is we will make sure that we send in our special operations and we will take out the cartels; we’ll take out their operations; we’ll take out anything that’s doing it.

But we’re going to go after China because China is the one sending the Fentanyl in the first place. And we will end all normal trade relations until China stops sending Fentanyl. And then we’ll do the special operations and we’ll get it from both sides.

This is where President Trump went wrong. He focused on trade with China. He didn’t focus on the fact that they were buying up our farmland. He didn’t focus on the fact that they were killing Americans. He didn’t focus on the fact that they were stealing $600 billion in intellectual property. He didn’t focus on the fact that they put a spy base off our shores in Cuba.

They didn’t focus enough on the fact that all of our law enforcement drones in America are Chinese. And we’ve got all these little surveillance cells. We need to start focusing on what keeps Americans safe. That hasn’t happened in a long time. As your president, I will make sure every American is safe, and we’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.

Russia, Ukraine and China

PERINO (Moderator): Experts say President Putin has ordered assassinations across Europe, cheated on arms control treaties with the U.S. and seeks to work with China to force our decline.

President Reagan believed that if you want to prevent a war, you better be prepared to fight one. Today the Republican Party is at odds over aid to Ukraine. The price tag so far is $76 billion. But is it in our best interest to degrade Russia’s military for less than 5 percent of what we pay annually on defense especially when there are no U.S. soldiers in the fight?

DESANTIS: It is in our interest to the end this war, and that’s what I will do as president. We are not going to have a blank check. We will not have U.S. troops. We are going to make the Europeans do what they need to do. But they’ve sent money to pay bureaucrats’ pensions and salaries and funding small businesses halfway around the world. Meanwhile, our own country is being invaded.

We don’t even have control of our own territory. We have got to defend the American people before we even worry about all these other things. And I watch these guys in Washington, D.C. and they don’t care about the American people. They don’t care about the fentanyl deaths. They don’t care about the communities being overrun because of this border. They don’t care about the Mexican drug cartels.

So as commander-in-chief, I will defend this country’s sovereignty.

HALEY: But it’s not a territorial dispute. It’s never been a territorial dispute.

SCOTT: And 90 percent of the resources that we send over that Ukraine is guaranteed as a loan. It is not 90 percent of the money that we send over there is loan. We could talk about this. But at the end of the day, 90 percent of the money that we send over there is actually —

DESANTIS: We’re not going to get it back.

SCOTT: It’s not actually going to be paid by Ukraine. It’s paid by the NATO, our NATO allies. Number one. Number two —

CROSSTALK

SCOTT: I will say, let’s debate the fact that our national vital interests is in degrading the Russian military. By degrading the Russian military, we actually keep our homeland safer, we keep our troops at home, and we all understand Article Five of NATO. When in fact —

CROSSTALK

SCOTT: So at the end of the day, when you think about the fact, if you want to keep American troops at home, the attack on NATO territory would bring us and our troops in. By degrading the Russian military, we reduce if not eliminate an attack on NATO territories.

RAMASWAMY: Just because Putin is not an evil — Putin is an evil dictator does not mean that Ukraine is good.

This is a country that has banned 11 opposition parties, that has actually…

HALEY: A win for Russia is a win for China.

RAMASWAMY: That is not true. We’re driving Russia…

HALEY: A win for Russia is a win for China.

RAMASWAMY: China is the real enemy. And we’re driving Russia further into China’s arms. We need a reasonable peace plan to end this, especially — this is a country whose president just last week was hailing a Nazi in his own ranks.

PENCE: Vivek, if you let Putin have Ukraine, that’s a green light to China to take Taiwan. Peace comes through strength.

RAMASWAMY: We need a reasonable plan to peace. We need a reasonable plan to peace.

VARNEY (Moderator): President Biden’s first two years have brought China, Russia, and Iran closer together. Are we focused too much on Ukraine, and not enough on this threat from the new world order?

CHRISTIE: No, they’re all connected, Stuart. They’re all connected.

The Chinese are paying for the Russian war in Ukraine. The Iranians are supplying more sophisticated weapons, and so are the North Koreans now as well, with the encouragement of the Chinese.

The naivete on this stage from some of these folks is extraordinary.

Look, I understand people want to go and talk to Putin. Guess what? So did George W. Bush. So did Barack Obama. So did Donald Trump. And so did Joe Biden, when he said a small invasion wouldn’t be so bad. Every one of them has been wrong.

And the fact of the matter is, we need to say right now that the Chinese-Russian alliance is something we have to fight against. And we are not going to solve it by going over and cuddling up to Vladimir Putin.

Look, Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin was brilliant and a great leader. This is the person who is murdering people in his own country. And now, not having enough blood, he’s now going to Ukraine to murder innocent civilians and kidnap 20,000 children.

And let me tell you, if you think that’s where it’s going to stop, if we give him any of Ukraine, next will be Poland.

This is a guy who said — wait one second.

This is a guy in 1991 who said that was the darkest moment in world history when the Soviet Union fell. Listen, everybody, he wants to put the old band back together. And only America can stop it. And when I’m president, we will.

BURGUM: The whole thing is absurd. And then, of course, we’re going to give Ukraine to Russia, and then we’re going to give Taiwan to China, and think that’s a foreign policy? That will make our nation less — less successful, make us more poor.

And at the core of all that is energy policy, because China imports 10 million barrels of oil a day. They’re the largest import in the world. And we have had four Cabinet members from the Biden administration there this summer, and none of them talked about U.S. energy.