Five Republicans seeking to oust President Joe Biden from the White House in 2024 sparred over the Israel-Hamas war, the threat from China and the U.S. approach to terrorism early in the third presidential primary debate.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., gathered at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County.
They repeatedly expressed support for Israel and decried Hamas, while criticizing Biden for his administration’s response.
A half-hour’s drive away, former President Donald Trump opened his rally in Hialeah, Florida, commemorating his 2016 election victory and declaring that if elected again in 2024, he would "finish the job we started."
PolitiFact is at work fact-checking their claims:
Ron DeSantis: "We had Floridians that were over there after the attack. He (Biden) 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."
This gives the misleading impression that the Biden administration failed to evacuate Americans, but that’s not the case.
On Oct. 12, the Biden administration announced that the next day that the U.S. government would arrange charter flights to assist U.S. citizens and their immediate family members to depart Israel.
The federal government offered 6,900 seats by air, land, and sea to Americans in Israel. Through Oct. 31, about 1,500 U.S. citizens and their family members had left Israel via federal government transport, a State Department spokesperson told PolitiFact.
DeSantis signed an Oct. 12 executive order allowing the state of Florida to evacuate Americans from Israel. Approximately 700 Americans have flown from Israel to Florida on four flights, according to information reported Oct. 24 by DeSantis’ office.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management told PolitiFact that the flights will cost about $32 million. The flights were free for passengers.
DeSantis: "There could have been more hostages" had Florida not sent planes to Israel to evacuate Americans.
We can’t rate a hypothetical, but this statement ignores the timeline of when hostages were taken.
Multiplemediaoutlets reported that Hamas took about 240 hostages during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Israel had secured towns in the area by Oct. 10.
On Oct. 12, DeSantis signed an executive order allowing Florida to evacuate Americans from Israel. The first flight offered by DeSantis landed in Tampa on Oct. 15.
Chris Christie: While U.S. attorney in New Jersey after 9/11, "We stopped any hate crimes that were going on, either against Jewish Americans in New Jersey or Muslim Americans in New Jersey."
The Asbury Park Press ran the numbers in 2016. Hate crimes did, in fact, drop.
Total reported hate crimes in 2010 numbered 775, the newspaper reported. The total number of hate crimes then dropped each year through 2015 — from 606, to 553, 459, 373 and, finally, 367 in 2015.
Religiously motivated hate crimes also trended downward until 2015. That year they increased nearly 10 percent in New Jersey.
DeSantis: "I actually served in Iraq back in the day"
This is accurate. DeSantis earned his law degree from Harvard University and served in the U.S. Navy as a lawyer, also known as a Jjudge Aadvocate Ggeneral, or JAG, officer. His military records show he enlisted in 2004 during his second year at Harvard and served from 2005 to 2010.
He was stationed in Iraq with SEAL Team 1 from 2007 to 2008 as a senior legal adviser to Navy Capt. Dane Thorleifson, the commander of the Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah.
DeSantis: "I already acted in Florida. We had a group Students for Justice of Palestine; they said they are common cause with Hamas, they said we're not just in solidarity, this is what we are. We deactivated them."
This doesn’t tell the whole story. There were no Florida chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine that made public statements about aligning with Hamas.
The group’s national body referred to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel as "the resistance" in an Oct. 12 toolkit that included advice campus chapters could use to host protests in support of Palestinians. In one section, the toolkit stated that "Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement."
This language spurred DeSantis to close chapters on Florida campuses, citing a state law about "knowingly provid(ing) material support … to a designated foreign terrorist organization." This affected chapters at the University of Florida and the University of South Florida.
First Amendment and constitutional law experts expressed doubt about DeSantis' use of the law and said the anti-terrorism statute doesn’t apply to speech.
Tim Scott: "I believe that we have sleeper terrorist cells in America. Thousands of people have come from Yemen, Iran, Syria and Iraq."
This needs context.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection releases the number of times immigration officials encounter a known or suspected terrorist each fiscal year. But the government doesn’t disclose the nationalities of the people apprehended.
Data about how many people from Yemen, Iran, Syria and Iraq have crossed U.S. borders under President Joe Biden’s administration isn’t available.
In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2023, CBP encountered a person on the terrorist watchlist 591 times. The majority of those encounters occurred at ports of entry on the northern border. People from this list who are encountered at the border can be denied entry into the United States.
Scott’s comment came as he discussed southern border security. However, Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, recently testified to Congress that his analysis of terrorist attacks in the U.S. from 1975 to 2022 showed that none of the people involved had crossed the southern border illegally.
Vivek Ramaswamy: "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."
This needs context.
In October, Ukraine’s parliament took a step toward banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, though a ban has not been fully approved.
Ramaswamy glossed over that the church was targeted for a ban because of alleged links to Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Most Ukrainian Christians belong to a different entity, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was formed by a 2018 merger of two churches that have no Russian ties.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the religious home of about 4% of the Ukrainian population, Reuters reported, citing data from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church opposes the proposed ban, arguing that it severed ties to Russia after the invasion. But a government commission ruled the church is still canonically linked to Russia, Reuters reported.
Ramaswamy: "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."
Bribery allegations against Hunter Biden are unsubstantiated. They stem from a 2020 form that FBI agents use to record unverified reporting from confidential human sources. An FBI official told the House Oversight Committee that allegations on the confidential reporting forms aren’t verified.
An unnamed informant said that Mykola Zlochevsky, an executive at Ukrainian energy company Burisma who was under investigation for money laundering and tax evasion, paid $5 million to both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden to convince the elder Biden to advocate for the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
News stories said the Justice Department closed an investigation into the matter after reviewing the claims and finding them not credible.
Devon Archer, who served on Burisma’s board with Hunter Biden, denied the bribery allegations in August testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. Congress has allocated $113 billion for Ukraine. Citing the Ukrainian government, Fox News reported in February that the U.S. had provided $196 billion in total military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, but that number has been called into question.
PolitiFact Staff Writers Samatha Putterman, Jeff Cercone, Madison Czopek, Maria Ramirez Uribe, Amy Sherman and Aaron Sharockman contributed to this report.
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