MIAMI — Vivek Ramaswamy warned he’d be unconstrained at Wednesday night’s debate, and unconstrained he was — leading to an intense moment when former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called him “just scum.”
Just minutes after first taking the stage, Ramaswamy went after three women: Haley, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and NBC News’ Kristen Welker, who was one of the debate moderators.
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“We got trounced last night in 2023. And I think that we have to have accountability in our party,” Ramaswamy said of the previous night’s elections in Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky, where Republicans suffered losses. “For that matter, Ronna, if you want to come onstage tonight, you want to look the GOP voters in the eye and tell them you resign, I will turn over my — yield my time to you.”
But Ramaswamy kept up his focus on Haley, with the most intense moment coming when he went after her daughter. He said she had joined TikTok, even as Haley had criticized Ramaswamy at a previous debate for using the app despite its ties to China.
“She made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time,” he said.
“Leave my daughter out of your voice,” Haley sneered.
“Just scum,” she added.
The attack came after Haley’s dig at Ramaswamy at the second debate went viral.
“Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” Haley told him then.
After Wednesday night’s debate, Haley said, “Look, I’m a mom. I’m a mom. So the second that you go and you start saying something about my 25-year-old daughter, I’m going to get my back up. But it’s not even the personal part – there are serious differences I have with him.”
Ramaswamy also kept the war of words going post-debate.
“If you look at the last several debates, you can ask her the same question,” Ramaswamy told reporters when asked about making personal attacks. “I think the last debate, she might have said that something like you feel she feels dumber every time she hears me speak? Well, I think … she’s been exposed.”
Ramaswamy also went after Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis together on foreign policy during the debate, implying that Haley would drive the U.S. toward “the mistakes from the neocon establishment of the past.” He asked the audience: “Do you want a leader from a different generation who’s gonna put this country first? Or do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels?”
Ramaswamy then added: “In which case, we’ve got two of them on stage tonight.”
Haley fired back soon after. “I’d first like to say, they’re five-inch heels.” And she added, “They’re not for a fashion statement. They’re for ammunition.”
Ramaswamy also attacked Welker during the debate, referencing the 2016 election and “the corrupt media establishment” and then accusing her of taking part in a “Trump Russia collusion hoax that you pushed on this network for years. Was that real or was that Hillary Clinton made-up disinformation? Answer the question. Go.”
“He is a supporter of women,” his wife, Apoorva, told NBC News after the debate. “I am a surgeon. I’m working I went to Yale for college and medical school and he has supported me in every stage of my career. He is extremely pro woman.”
NBC News asked Ronna McDaniel after the debate for response to Ramaswamy, and she said she wanted to keep the focus on Joe Biden.
But, she added, “I’m not going to focus on attacking other Republicans. I do think it’s a symptom of some of the things that we saw in ’22 with Republicans attacking other Republicans. I don’t think that’s a winning strategy. So I’m going to focus on the border, fentanyl, crime — the issues that the voters want to hear about. And they really want to hear us take on the Democrats.”
Haley has been rising in the polls, challenging DeSantis for the second-place spot that he had comfortably held for months. During the debate Wednesday night, Haley was one of the top candidates who faced attacks from her rivals — and threw out attacks — according to NBC News’ tracker.
Natasha Korecki
Natasha Korecki is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
Allan Smithcontributed.