now. live from drake university in des moines, iowa, this is the cnn republican presidential debate. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world watching us on cnn. cnn max, cnn international, cnn in espanol, and cnn.com. good evening. i m jake tapper moderating tonight s debate alongside my friend and colleague dana bash. and just five days from now, voters here in iowa will cast the first votes of the 2024 presidential race. tonight the very first one-on-one matchup between top contenders, governor ron desantis and former governor and u.n. ambassador nikki haley. former president trump met the requirements for tonight s debate but declined to participate. our commitment in this debate is to provide as much information as possible to voters, especially here in iowa before the first contests begin next week. so in choosing topics, we focused on the issues important to republicans. let s bring out the candidates now. please welcome florida
moment. this is where we begin in the u.p.s. sources say a mar-a-lago maintenance worker flooded a computer server room when surveillance video where surveillance video was stored when that worker drained pool, this happened in october and raising a lot of questions in the special counsel s probe of donald trump and hayes handling of classified documents. we are told this is the same maintenance worker spotted on surveillance footage moving boxes before the fbi executed a search warrant and found hundreds of classified documents at mar-a-lago. it s not clear if the surveillance video room was flooded intentionally or if this happened by mistake. our sources are telling us that it happened during a string of incidents that federal prosecutors find suspicious. surveillance video is a key piece of evidence in special counsel s probe. prosecutors have been involving whether trump and staffers tried to hide the classified documents from federal agents. cnn senior justice corre
that s my line. we have got some headlines for you. let s begin here. big news this morning. ukraine s president volodymr zelenskyy heading in person the g7 summit in japan to meet face to face with president biden and other world leaders. also, that accused pentagon leaker is going appear in court in a few hours and former and current defense officials are expressing alarm that the young airman kept his job even after he was reported multiple times to commanders for mishandling class fight intelligence. disney delivered a huge $1 billion employee to ron desantis florida right before he is expected to announce a run for president. this hour of cnn this morning starts right now. and we have been tracking developments really all morning out of japan this morning where white house now says president biden left dinner early with world leaders at the g7 summit to get an update on what is happening back in washington on the debt limit talks. the crisis in d.c. oversh
Now. live from drake university in des moines, iowa, this is the cnn republican presidential debate. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world watching us on cnn. cnn max, cnn international, cnn in espanol, and cnn.com. good evening. i m jake tapper moderating tonight s debate alongside my friend and colleague dana bash. and just five days from now, voters here in iowa will cast the first votes of the 2024 presidential race. tonight the very first one-on-one matchup between top contenders, governor ron desantis and former governor and
Is some of 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 re somehow globalists and we have unlimited resources to do. you know, here s the problem. you can take the ambassador out of the united nations, but you can t take the united nations out of the ambassador. [ applause ] first of all, i have never said we should give salaries or benefits or anything else to ukrainians. i have said it again, ron, so stop lying. but you supported the aid packages. governor desantis, she has the floor. i did not support the aid package. i support equipment and ammunition going to ukraine. i think it is incredibly important that we re honest and say we have to focus on national security. don t go and lie to the american people to make them think we can t do this. y