Haley and DeSantis clash hard in Republican debate: attacks on Trump and mutual accusations. Chris Christie withdraws

Repeated accusations and attacks. On the stage of the last Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis go head-to-head for the first time alone live on CNN. Trump discusses the debate and concedes to Fox News. Haley is confident: 'The polls indicate that I beat Joe Biden'. DeSantis points instead to the wall with Mexico and emphasises: 'I will be a president to be proud of. Change channels and Trump retorts: 'Biden is chaos. The markets will collapse if I don't win the election. 'When I was president,' The Donald claims, 'the world feared me'. Trump then admitted that he already knows who his deputy will be. 'I can't say yet,' the former president said, however.

The debate between Haley and DeSantis followed Chris Christie's surprise announcement that he had withdrawn his candidacy, and while Trump on Fox was recounting his unchallenged vision. Haley and DeSantis criticised the former president from a distance. Trump 'lost the 2020 election, Biden won. He's repeating that 6 January was a wonderful day while for me it was terrible," Haley said, predicting "four years of chaos" if the former president wins and reiterating that the US needs next-generation leaders. "The next president must have moral clarity" and a vision "over twenty years, not four or eight," the former South Carolina governor added.

'I wish Trump was here, because I'm running against him,' she pointed out again, thus trying to belittle her rival DeSantis, against whom she launched the website desantislies.com, to collect all the Florida governor's lies. His campaign is "exploding: he can't run it, how can he run the country?" pointed the finger at Haley. DeSantis did not take the attacks passively: the former ambassador to the UN 'may be more liberal than the governor of California Gavin Newsom ', she said, noting how in the 'White House we don't need an accountant, we need a leader'.

Haley is "weak" on immigration, he added, also criticising Trump on migrants. "He promised that he would build the wall on the border with Mexico and that he would increase deportations of illegal migrants but he didn't: he deported fewer migrants than Barack Obama," he explained, highlighting the need to have a wall on the border. Tones between the two White House contenders rose even higher on Ukraine. Haley reiterated her support for Kiev because 'if Russia wins, China wins' over Taiwan. DeSantis, on the other hand, reiterated her opposition, noting that Haley is more concerned about Ukrainian borders than American borders. The fierce 120-minute battle on camera between Haley and DeSantis is unlikely to change the outcome of the caucuses in Iowa, where Trump has a double-digit lead. The two, however, are competing for second place and, at least for the first primary, will face off ruthlessly to try to establish themselves as the anti-Trump.