Republican debate: Fact-checking claims made by candidates in second GOP matchup

GOP presidential hopefuls clashed in the second primary debate on Wednesday in occasionally bitter exchanges on the economy, foreign policy, and immigration.

With front-runner Donald Trump absent from the stage, the Republican rivals aimed most of their fire at each other. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy absorbed many of the blows.

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The candidates occasionally relied on misleading arguments to press their points, while others accurately cited their records.

Here is a fact check of the debate.

“We’ve paid down over 25% of our state debt.” – Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL)

DeSantis has paid down nearly a quarter of his state’s debt since taking office.

In 2018, the year DeSantis won the governorship, Florida’s debt sat at $21 billion.

By July of this year, the state government had paid off $5 billion of that debt.

The state debt had already started dropping before DeSantis took office; it shrunk by more than $7 billion over the eight previous years.

However, DeSantis presided over a substantial reduction in the state budget, and it was as large as he stated.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie claimed no one has done anything on immigration in 13 years.

That’s not entirely accurate.

Both of President Joe Biden’s predecessors took significant immigration steps, although in opposite directions.

Former President Barack Obama effectively extended amnesty for hundreds of thousands of people when he authorized the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which granted legal status to immigrants brought to the country illegally by their parents.

Former President Donald Trump also focused substantially on immigration. His administration built long stretches of a wall along the southern border and instituted a policy known as “Remain in Mexico,” which required migrants to wait on the Mexican side of the southern border while awaiting the adjudication of their asylum claims.

While illegal immigration has hit historic levels under the Biden administration, it’s not the case that immigration policies have remained stagnant for the past 13 years.

Christie made the claim to explain why he has shifted his position on amnesty since being governor of New Jersey.

“…you were just in business with the Chinese Communist Party.” – Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to Ramaswamy

Ramaswamy took fire from other candidates for the work one of his companies did in 2018 with a Chinese company.

Ramaswamy’s biotech firm, Roivant Sciences, announced in 2018 that it was forming a new pharmaceutical company in China, backed by a Chinese private equity firm.

The private equity firm was run by Chinese nationals who were closely connected to the CCP.

Ramaswamy has said he withdrew from business in China after better understanding the risks China poses to U.S. interests, and he has cited his experience with that venture as a reason why he has advocated cracking down on Chinese influence in corporate America.

Scott also compared Ramaswamy’s Chinese business with Hunter Biden’s work in China, which is also misleading.

Hunter Biden, his uncle, and a handful of former business partners earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for associating directly with CCP-linked Chinese entities. Hunter Biden routed his money through a network of shell companies, and he appeared to offer little of value to the Chinese entities beyond his association with his father, the then-vice president.

Moderator: “You have said slaves develop skills in spite of slavery, not because of it. But many are still hurt. For descendants of slaves, this is personal. What is your message to them?”

DeSantis: “So first of all, that’s a hoax that was perpetrated by Kamala Harris. We are not going to be doing that.”

Much of the rhetoric surrounding the black history education standards was misleading at the time the issue became a national news story this summer.

The Florida Board of Education, through a working group, developed new standards for teaching race following DeSantis’s signing of state legislation that aimed to prevent teachers from involving “guilt” in the way they teach lessons on slavery and race.

The standards were more than 200 pages long, but on one page, the board included a line that noted “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

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Members of the working group included teachers, as well as other education professionals and education officials. It also included at least two black scholars who defended the controversial line as historically accurate and not at all reflective of the overwhelmingly negative way in which the curriculum depicts slavery.

Vice President Kamala Harris was not the first Democrat to criticize the standards; she joined a chorus of criticism from Democrats and activists and elevated the issue to a national controversy.