DeSantis Asserts: The Ambassadorship to the UN Cannot Be Taken Away

The debate between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley centered around the issue of Ukraine’s border versus America’s border.

“You know, I think there is the problem: You can take the ambassador out of the United Nations, but you can’t take the United Nations out of the ambassador,” DeSantis said during Wednesday night’s debate in Des Moines, Iowa – the final one before the first-in-the-nation caucus officially launches the 2024 GOP primary cycle.

Haley served as former President Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador and has now occupied the anti-Trump lane of the GOP primary, while DeSantis’ foreign policy positions are closer to Trump’s. Ukraine aid versus border funding has been an issue that has long divided the anti-Trump Republicans like Haley and the America First/MAGA wing like DeSantis.

“She supports this $106 billion they are trying to get through Congress,” DeSantis began. “Where is that money going? They’ve done tens of billions of dollars to pay salaries for Ukrainian government bureaucrats. They’ve paid pensions for Ukrainian retirees with your tax dollars. We’ve got homeless veterans. We have all these problems. This is the U.N. way of thinking, that we are somehow globalists and have unlimited resources to do.”

DeSantis’ big moment also brought Haley’s biggest one-liner, leading her into repeating her debate mantra of “Ron, so stop lying, DeSantislies.com,” and finishing with her attack on DeSantis’ campaign spending.

“Think about the fact that he is talking about where is this money going to come from: The best way to tell about a candidate is to see how they run their campaign,” Haley shot back. “He has blown through $150 million – I don’t know how you even do that – through his campaign. He has nothing to show for it.

“He spent more money on private planes than he has on commercials trying to get Iowans to vote for him. If you cannot manage a campaign, how are you going to manage a country?”