every day. why is congress the only group that refuses to balance a budget? we ll stop the spending. we ll stop the borrowing. we ll eliminate the pet projects and the earmarks, and i ll veto any spending bill that doesn t take us back to precovid levels. and then we want to make sure that we allow the middle class to breathe. we re going to eliminate the federal gas and diesel tax in this country and cut taxes on the middle class and simplify those brackets. and then we want to make the small business tax cuts permanent. they made corporate tax cuts permanent, but they made small business tax cuts temporary. small businesses are the heartbeat of america. we need to prove it by making those tax cuts permanent. governor desantis, what s your response? how would you make those essentials more affordable for americans? well, i disagree with ambassador haley. we don t need an accountant in the white house, we need a leader in the white house. and that s what i would bring. i ve spoke
and guatemala, and what we saw is a lot of the reason why they were coming from there is because of gangs and drugs. and so what question we did was we had our military go and train them on how to deal with gangs. we went and put drug boats on the water to keep the drugs from coming. but we said you have to have them processed from here. you can t have them come. we were able to stop that flow. we ve got to go back to do that. but we need to end it once and for all. donald trump didn t do that. that s why he needs to be here, debating on this stage right now. governor, thank you. let s turn to foreign policy. you have expressed different visions for how the u.s. should approach the international conflicts. and i want to start with ukraine. it s been nearly two years since russia invaded ukraine, and there is still no end in sight to that war. governor haley, you say this is, quote, a war about freedom, that ukraine must win. governor desantis says, quote, we need to bring this war to
money. i think you need to have moral clarity to understand that when you re dealing with dictators in the world, that we always have to fight for democracies and human rights and protecting americans and preventing war. so when you look at donald trump, i have said i think he was the right president at the right time. i agree with a lot of his policies, but his way is not my way. i don t have vengeance. i don t have vendettas. i don t take things personally. for me, it s very much about no drama, no whining, and getting results and getting them done. so i don t think that president trump is the right president to go forward. i think it s time for a new generational leader that is going to go and make america proud again. that s what i m going to try and do. governor desantis, what is your response to chris christie? do you believe donald trump has the character to be president again? well, i m running because i m the guy that s going to be able to engineer a comeback for this coun
so that no one even steps foot on u.s. soil. and instead of catch and release, we need to go to catch and deport. that s the only way we ll stop the incentives of the illegal immigrants coming across. biden gave half a million venezuelans temporary protected status. that s half a million driver s licenses, half a million social security numbers. all that does is incentivize them to pick up the phone and call their family members and them them to come here. thank you. when she was governor, she did bring syrian refugees, and she got criticized for that. that is not true. desantis lies.com. that is not true. we ll give you your turn in a second. governor desantis? unbelievable. the disrespect comment, she is talking about that they re all families. if you look right now at the border, these are military age males, many of them. and they re coming from all across this world. not just from central america. you ve got them from china, iran, russia, the middle east. when i was do
president am i going the pressure israel to risk their security to do a so-called two-state solution. she was wrong when she embraced that, and we re right to say we trust israel to make these decisions. they re a good ally of ours. we should trust cher judgment on these sensitive issues. governor desantis, 15 seconds, 15-second clarification. do you support the mass removal of palestinians from gaza? so as president, i am not going to tell them to do that. i think there is a lot of issues with that. but if they make the calculation that to avert a second holocaust, they need to do that, i think some of these palestinian arabs, saudi arabia should take some. thank you. egypt should take some. they ve never been willing to accept any of these folks in their own neighborhood. governor haley? first of all, we need to understand the reason we need to support israel is israel is a bright spot in a tough neighborhood. that irthe tip of the spear when it comes to defeating terrori