BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over):  High in the hills of California’s Simi Valley stands a monument to one of the most beloved leaders in our nation’s history, Ronald Reagan, the Gipper, the Great Communicator, America’s 40th commander in chief.

He railed against big government…

RONALD REAGAN, FORMER President OF THE UNITED STATES:  The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

HUME:  … and sought peace through strength.

REAGAN:  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

HUME:  Forty years after Reagan’s landslide reelection, the Republican Party faces critical questions:  What does it mean to be a conservative?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  We fight for the truth.

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  We are not going to worry about what the left and the media say about us.

HUME:  What is the key to a thriving economy?

GOV. DOUG BURGUM (R-ND), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  It’s innovation, not regulation.

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  America can do for anyone what she’s done for me.

NIKKI HALEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  We will stop the spending. We will stop the borrowing. We will stop the earmarks.

HUME:  What is America’s role in the world?

MIKE PENCE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  We need to build a military fitted to the widening challenges in an ever more dangerous world.

FMR. GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  Sometimes, you avoid war by showing you’re tough.

HUME:  And the country faces even more challenges. Would Reagan even recognize the country in which we now live?

Tonight, candidates seeking the Republican nomination converge in California to chart a new path for the Grand Old Party. Now is the time for choosing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(APPLAUSE)

STUART VARNEY, FOX BUSINESS ANCHOR:  Welcome to the second Republican Debate of the 2024 Primary live from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

We’re inside the spectacular Air Force One Pavilion, where the stage is set for a showdown. I’m Stuart Varney of FOX Business, and I am thrilled to be sitting alongside my co-moderators, FOX News Channel, Dana Perino and Ilia Calderon of Univision.

ILIA CALDERON, UNIVISION ANCHOR:  Good evening.

VARNEY:  Good evening.

CALDERON:  Thank you. Thank you, Stuart.

President Reagan famously described America as a shining city on a hill. And, tonight, seven candidates will make the case they should be the one to lead that city into a brighter tomorrow.

But, first, they have to convince you, the voter.

Please allow me to welcome our Spanish-speaking audience. (SPEAKING SPANISH)

DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR:  And good evening.

So, let’s meet the candidates who have qualified and chosen to be on this stage tonight. They are positioned by the order they rank in the polls, with the highest-polling candidate in the middle.

Standing center stage, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

VARNEY:  Flanking the governor, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy…

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

VARNEY:  … and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CALDERON:  Next is South Carolina Senator Tim Scott…

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CALDERON:  … and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

PERINO:  On the wing tonight, former Vice President Mike Pence…

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

PERINO:  … and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

VARNEY:  We have questions on a wide variety of issues important to primary voters.

Candidates get one minute to answer and 30 seconds to respond if singled out. When their time runs out, we will all hear this.

(BELL RINGING)

VARNEY:  We have a lot of ground to cover, so please keep it civilized.

PERINO:  Let’s get going.

We are in this spacious, sunny place tonight designed to reflect the very nature and character of Ronald Reagan. It’s a place that makes you proud to be an American. Yet, today, our nation is drowning in division and incivility.

CALDERON:  Voters say they dread the 2024 election and find politics exhausting. Two in three Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and three in four say that the economy is not in good shape.

VARNEY:  Prices are up 18 percent since 2020. More than half of the U.S. population has little access to childcare; 85 percent of Americans say their personal finances are a source of stress.  

PERINO:  Americans want to believe a leader who says: you can follow me, I’ve got you, don’t worry.  President Biden is trying to do that with Bidenomics.  

VARNEY:  And yesterday he joined the picket lines where auto workers are demanding more wages and job security.  

Senator Scott, you recently reacted by praising Ronald Reagan for firing air traffic controllers in the 1980s, saying, you strike, you’re fired.  Would you fire thousands of striking auto workers today, Senator?  

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  Obviously the president of the United States cannot fire anybody in the private sector.  However, we should look back at the first bill in Congress under Joe Biden.  The first bill had $86 billion for the union pensions because they continue to over-promise yet under-deliver.  One of the challenges that we have with the current negotiations is that they want four-day French workweeks, but more money.  They want more benefits working fewer hours.  

That is simply not going to stand.  I sat in a Finance Committee hearing when a widow came before the committee whose promised pensions from the unions, $4,000 a month.  Unfortunately it had been cut to $1,000 a month.  We must make sure that we honor the commitments that we make.  And one of the ways we do that, do not over-promise and then under-deliver and leave the taxpayers on the hook.  

I’ll say this, Joe Biden should not be on the picket line.  He should be on the southern border working to close our southern border.

(APPLAUSE)

SCOTT:  Because it is unsafe, wide open, and insecure, leading to the deaths of 70,000 Americans in the last 12 months because of fentanyl.  It is devastating.  Every county in America is now a border county because fentanyl has devastated Americans in every single state.  

I will also say 6 million illegal crossings since Joe Biden has taken office.  And he eliminated Title 42.  

(BELL SOUNDS)

SCOTT:  The one thing he should do is finish the wall, reinstate Title 42, and get the job done.  

(APPLAUSE)

PERINO:  Well, I can promise you we are going to have a lot of questions on the border and immigration.  But in the meantime, we want to talk about the economy and jobs, and especially want to talk about this strike for just a moment more.  

Mr. Ramaswamy, you’ve said you really empathize with the strikers.  You’re standing next to Senator Scott and do you agree with what he said or I do you think he’s wrong?  

VIVEK RAMASWAMY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  I agree with some of what he said, for sure.  I like the spirit of it.  I’ll say that I don’t have a lot of patience for the union bosses.  I think that’s where he and I actually have a common view.  I do have a lot of sympathy for the workers, however.  People are going through real hardship in this country.  

I’ve been through hardship growing up.  My father stared down layoffs at GE under Jack Welch’s tenure at the GE plant in Evendale, Ohio.  My mom had to work overtime in nursing homes in southwest Ohio to make ends meet and pay off our home loan.  So I understand that hardship is not a choice.  

But victimhood is a choice.  And we choose to be victorious in the United States of America.  You know, if I was giving advice to those workers, I would say go picket in front of the White House in Washington, D.C.  That’s really where the protest needs to be.  Disastrous economic policies that have driven up prices, that have driven up interest rates and mortgage rates, at the same time wages remaining stagnant.  

What we need is to deliver economic growth in this country.  Unlock American energy, drill, frack, burn coal, embrace nuclear energy, put people back to work by no longer paying them more money to stay at home.  Stabilize the U.S. dollar itself.  And rescind a majority of those unconstitutional federal regulations that are hampering our economy.  

That is how we unleash American exceptionalism.  And that’s not a Democratic vision or a Republican vision, that is an American vision that we embrace economic growth.  And capitalism is still the best system known to man to lift us up from poverty.  And we should not apologize for it.  That’s what it means to be an American.  

(APPLAUSE)

VARNEY:  Together the CEOs of General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis make 336 times the number of rank and — the member — number of rank and file workers.  That’s just part of a wider income inequality trend in the country.  The richest 1 percent now controls one-fifth of all income.  

Vice President Pence, last week you said you side with American workers, but you also support how these companies operate.  Which is it?  

MIKE PENCE (R), FORMER VICE PRESIDENT, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  Well, thank you for the question.  I want to thank Univision and Fox Business for assembling such a wonderful forum.  

Look, I do disagree with something Tim Scott just said.  Joe Biden doesn’t belong on a picket line. He belongs on the unemployment line.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

PENCE: I mean, look, I’m from the second leading manufacturing state, in the country, per capita. I was Governor of the State of Indiana. We brought 12,000 factories back to America, during our administration. I know something about manufacturing.

And I got to tell you, while the union bosses are talking about class warfare, and talking about disparity, in wages, I have to tell you, I really believe what’s driving that is Bidenomics has failed. Wages are not keeping up with inflation. Autoworkers and all American workers are feeling it. And families are struggling in this economy.

And Joe Biden’s Green New Deal agenda is good for Beijing, and bad for Detroit. We ought to repeal the Green New Deal, get rid of the mandates and subsidies that are driving American gasoline automotive manufacturing, into the graveyard.

And beyond that also, as President of the United States, I’ll be standing with workers, all across America, and I’ll be standing, for the right to work, of every American, to join a union or not join a union, as they decide.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

VARNEY: Senator Scott, you are mentioned.

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC): Yes.

VARNEY: Would you care to respond?

SCOTT: There’s no doubt that Joe Biden needs to be fired. That’s why I’m running for president. I look forward to being the next President of the United States. I will also say, I know America can do for anyone what she’s done, for me. It’s why we’re focusing on restoring hope, creating opportunities, and protecting the America, we all love.

Growing up in a single-parent household, I wondered if the American Dream would work for a kid, in the inner city. I’ve got good news. For every single child, whether you’re in the inner cities of Chicago, or the rural parts of Iowa, America and the Dream, it is alive, it is well, and it is healthy.

God bless these United States of America.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

VARNEY: Governor Haley, you raised your hand.

NIKKI HALEY, FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR: Yes, I think we need to look at exactly what happened. Biden showed up on that picket line. But why are those workers actually there? It’s because of all of the spending that he is pushed through in the economy that’s raised the inflation.

So when you look at the fact that we are paying higher gas prices, higher grocery prices, $7,000 more a year for families, what we need to do is, I came out with an economic plan, eliminate the gas and diesel tax so that they have more money in their pocket.

Let’s focus on going after Middle America and cutting taxes for Middle America collapsing those brackets. Let’s get rid of unfair distortions like the state and local tax that they give to wealthy people, in Blue states, and not — and paid by Red states. And let’s make sure we make the small business taxes permanent. They only made those temporary. They made the corporate taxes permanent.

Let’s focus on what it takes to get more cash in the pockets of workers. That’s when we’ll be able to deal with strikes, like this, not sitting on a picket line, like Joe Biden is.

DOUG BURGUM, NORTH DAKOTA GOVERNOR: This is good stuff (ph).

ILIA CALDERON, NOTCIERO UNIVISION ANCHOR, UNIVISION NETWORK: Thank you, Governor Haley. We have other questions, to get to, about the economy.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

CALDERON: Allow me to.

BURGUM: I interrupted. I’m sorry.

CALDERON: Allow me to — allow me to.

BURGUM: I’m sorry. I have to jump in, because we’re missing the point. And every other network is missing the point.

The reason why people are striking in Detroit is because Joe Biden’s interference, with capital markets, and with free markets. The subsidies, we’re subsidizing the automakers, and we’re subsidizing the cars, and a particular kind of car, not every car. We’re particularly we’re subsidizing electric vehicles. And when you decide that we’re going to take all of your taxpayer monies, take a billion dollars, subsidize a certain type of vehicle, and the batteries come from China?

China controls 85 percent of the Rare Earth minerals. They’re called Rare Earth, because they’re measured in parts per million. China is moving 100,000 pounds of Earth, in Indonesia, in Africa. They’re literally destroying the planet, so that we can make a battery that’s in a car, subsidized here.

CALDERON: Right.

BURGUM: That’s why they’re striking, because they need two-thirds less workers to build an electric car. Joe Biden, this strike is at Joe Biden’s feet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is happening —

CALDERON: We are going to give — we are going to —

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

CALDERON: We are going to give the topic of economy. But allow me to follow — the follow question, to Governor Christie.

The government will shut down, if Congress does not reach a deal, by the end of this week. Vice President Pence warns that politics of quote, “Trump’s populist prodigies,” like Mr. Ramaswamy are a road to ruin, for the GOP. If the government shuts down, should voters blame populist Republicans?

CHRIS CHRISTIE, FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR: Voters simply (ph), and everybody, who’s in Washington, D.C., they get sent down there, to do the job. And they’ve been failing at doing the job, for a very long time. And let’s be honest about this with the voters.

During the Trump administration, they added $7 trillion, $7 trillion in national debt. And now, the Biden administration has put another $5 trillion on and counting. They have failed, and they’re in the spot they’re in now because none of them are willing to tell the truth; none of them are willing to take on the difficult issues. They just want to keep kicking the can down the road.

And the inflation that Nikki spoke about is absolutely right, and it’s caused by government spending. And that’s why people all across this country are suffering tonight. And yet we don’t get any answers because Joe Biden hides in his basement and won’t answer as to why he’s raising the debt the way he’s done. And Donald Trump hides behind the walls of his golf clubs and won’t show up here to answer questions like all the rest of us are up here to answer.

He put $7 trillion on the debt…

(APPLAUSE)

… he should be in this room to answer those questions for the people you talk about who are suffering.

(APPLAUSE)

PENCE (?):  Can I speak about…

(CROSSTALK)

CHRISTIE:  And if the government — and if the government closes — and if the government closes…

PENCE (?):  Can I speak about that?

CHRISTIE:  … it’s the blame — it is to the blame of everyone in Washington, D.C. who has failed to do their job and just plays to the grandstand.

(CROSSTALK)

CALDERON:  The next question is for Governor DeSantis.

(CROSSTALK)

SCOTT:  We want to get things done. Here’s how we get it done in Washington.

(CROSSTALK)

CALDERON:  Please respect the time.

SCOTT:  We can get it done.

CALDERON:  Governor DeSantis, you haven’t spoken. Please.

DESANTIS:  The people in Washington are shutting down the American dream with their reckless behavior. They borrowed, they printed, they spent and now you’re paying more for everything. They are the reason for that. They have shut down our national sovereignty by allowing our border to be wide open.

So please spare me the crocodile tears for these people. They need to change what’s going on. And where’s Joe Biden? He’s completely missing in action from leadership.

And you know who else is missing in action? Donald Trump is missing in action. He should be on this stage tonight.

(APPLAUSE)

He owes it to you…

(APPLAUSE)

… to defend his record, where they added $7.8 trillion to the debt. That set the stage for the inflation that we have.

Now, I can tell you this as governor of Florida, we cut taxes; we ran surpluses; we’ve paid down over 25 percent of our state debt. And I vetoed wasteful spending when it came to my desk. And as your president, when they send me a bloating spending bill that’s going to cause your prices to go up, I’m going to take out this veto pen and I’m going to send it right back to them.

(APPLAUSE)

RAMASWAMY:  Ilia, you mentioned…

(CROSSTALK)

RAMASWAMY:  … question. I just wanted to address it.

PERINO:  You guys, I’m going to go — I’m going to go to Senator Scott, but I have a question that is on the minds of a lot of moms and dads and Americans, and I know that you’ve been thinking about it because — childcare costs…

SCOTT:  Yes.

PERINO:  … they are up.  They’re topping $10,000 per month.  Some families are spending up to half of their income on childcare.

SCOTT:  Yes.

PERINO:  And they’re having to decide, is it worth it for me to work or does it not make sense for me financially?

In three days, the billions of dollars in pandemic-era funding is going to end.  And 70,000 daycares could close. So you had an effort to broaden eligibility for childcare assistance. That fell apart last year.

And for the moms and dads out there who are worried, what can you tell them, if you weren’t able to get it through the Congress, how could you do it as president?

SCOTT:  Certainly, one of the things I did as a member of the Congress was to make sure that we protected the Head Start programs around the country, giving people the opportunity to pick and choose the place that they send their children. The challenges that we see today under the Biden administration is that the cost for daycare has gone over $15,000 per child.

And the Build Back Broker plan — he called it a Build Back Better plan — it was going up to $29,000. The way we fix that problem is to make sure that we actually cut taxes and give more Americans their money back.

When I helped write the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, we actually lowered a single mother’s taxes by 70 percent on the federal level, for dual-income households by 60 percent. Then we went a step further. We doubled the child tax credit and made it refundable.

By doing that, more parents had more resources to make the decisions how to take care of their family. The one thing we should do is let the American people keep their money. When that happens, the greatest opportunities rise from the ashes.

RAMASWAMY:  Let me jump in here.

PERINO:  I can give you 15 seconds. Go ahead, and then we’re going to the border.

RAMASWAMY:  I need to jump in because Ilia — Ilia mischaracterized part of my view. I think this artificial division is unhelpful in our party. The real divide is not between the Republicans on this stage. And in the Reagan Library, I want to say these are good people on this stage. The real divide is between the majority of us in this country who love the United States of America and share our founding ideals, free speech, meritocracy…

PERINO:  OK.

RAMASWAMY:  … the idea you get ahead in this country not on the color of your skin but on the content of your character. And the fringe minority in the Democrat Party that has a chokehold over that party, that’s the real divide.

PERINO:  All right…

RAMASWAMY:  So this populist versus classical debate…

PERINO:  We are going to go to immigration.

RAMASWAMY:  … is artificial. We need to unite this party.

PENCE:  I actually want to…

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO:  … immigration and the border.

(CROSSTALK)

CALDERON:  We are going to talk about immigration and the border and…

PENCE:  I want to answer the question on — I want to answer the question on childcare.  We have millions…

VIVEK RAMASWAMY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  We got the hell out of there.

And when I started my next company, Strive —  

(CROSSTALK)

NIKKI HALEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  Right before you ran for president?

RAMASWAMY:  That’s years ago.

(CROSSTALK)

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  2023, 2023.

RAMASWAMY:  Right when I started my next company, Strive, to compete against Blackrock —  

SCOTT:  It’s a debate.

RAMASWAMY:  Excuse me.

SCOTT:  No, no. It’s a debate between you and you.

(CROSSTALK)

RAMASWAMY:  To compete against Blackrock, I made a commitment that we would never do business in China. And I will say something —  

(CROSSTALK)

ILIA CALDERON, DEBATE MODERATOR:  Mr. Ramaswamy, I think you have more than time to explain your point.

RAMASWAMY:  Well, if I — I was interrupted by a lot of people here and I want to be respectful because I believe —  

(CROSSTALK)

SCOTT:  I’ve been — yeah, you were respectful in the last debate.

RAMASWAMY:  But I do not believe in this — we’re sitting here in the Reagan Library.

SCOTT:  Yes, I wish —  

(CROSSTALK)

SCOTT:  — midnight in America.

(CROSSTALK)

RAMASWAMY:  And the honor of Ronald Reagan’s library, if I may. From one — Tim, from one admirer of Ronald Reagan to another —

SCOTT:  Listen, all I’m asking you. I’m asking you —

RAMASWAMY:  From one admirer of Ronald Reagan to another, we cannot —

(CROSSTALK)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  This is unproductive, I want  

(CROSSTALK)

RAMASWAMY:  Let’s have a policy debate —

DESANTIS:  — understand what’s going on.

(CROSSTALK)

RAMASWAMY:  Let’s have a policy debate, and the right answer is —  

(CROSSTALK)

CALDERON:  Mr. Ramaswamy, I have a question for Vice President Pence. Thank you very much.

RAMASWAMY:  — we need to declare independence from China, and I will say that through.

CALDERON:  Vice President Pence, in 2017, the Trump-Pence administration canceled DACA, which put the legal status of 600,000 Dreamers in the hands of the court. Dreamers work and they pay taxes.

As president, if the Supreme Court ends DACA, would you work with Congress to reach a permanent solution for Dreamers?

MIKE PENCE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  First, let me say, I’m glad — I’m glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in 2018 in China. That must have been about the time you decided to start voting in presidential elections. So, nice to have you participate in elections.

(CROSSTALK)

PENCE:  So, let me — let me speak to this issue. Number one, I negotiated the “Remain in Mexico” policy with the Mexican government. We used economic power to bring the Mexican government to the table. We built hundreds of miles of border wall and despite what’s said here today, we reduced illegal immigration and asylum abuse by 90 percent.

And as president of the United States, I can do it again.

(CROSSTALK)

PENCE:  And truth is what — the truth is we need to fix a broken immigration system and I’ll do that as well.

But first and foremost, a nation without borders is not a nation. And we have to secure the southern border of the United States of America, I know how to do it and we will do it again.

Let me say one other thing about China.

(APPLAUSE)

CALDERON:  Vice President —  

PENCE:  Let me say one other thing about China —  

CALDERON:  Vice President, would you negotiate with Congress to give a solution to the problem that Dreamers have right now? They are on a limbo.

PENCE:  Let me tell you, I served in Congress for 12 years, although it seemed longer.

But you know, something I’ve done different than everybody on this stage is I’ve actually — I’ve actually secured reform in Congress.

You know — you know, Ron, you talk a really good game about cutting spending but you’ve increased spending in Florida by 30 percent.

When I was a member of Congress in 2006, right after Hurricane Katrina, Dana, you remember it, we stood our ground. I led House conservatives. We cut $100 billion out of the federal budget.

It can be done, but as I said in the last debate, I’ll say again, this is no time for on the job training. I’m going to be ready on day one to get Congress to step up, secure the southern border of the United States, build a military fitted to our times —  

CALDERON:  Okay, thank you, Mr. Vice President.

PENCE:  — and we’re going to get spending in Washington, D.C. under control once and for all.

(CROSSTALK)

STUART VARNEY, DEBATE MODERATOR:  On the other side of this — I propose to go to a break — how will these candidates make America safer as rising crime plagues our cities? Debate night continues in moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS HOST: And welcome back to the Reagan Library for the second Republican presidential debate. I do want to just remind everyone. There’s one minute for questions, three seconds for a follow-up, and the more we mention each other that means fewer questions you’re going to get.

OK. So we want to talk about crime. This has been a horrendous problem in our country. FOX News and others have been covering it.

Governor Christie, crime in major cities is striking fear into the hearts of Americans. Just last night, looters took over the streets of Philadelphia. You said in the last debate that you would use U.S. attorneys to prosecute crimes local prosecutors won’t. But they are stretched as well and they could not handle all of the lawlessness, the shoplifting, all the carjackings, the armed robberies. They are all surging.

Progressive prosecutors were elected by their constituents and they can’t be fired by a president. So what would you do to end the revolving door of criminality?

CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, look, Dana, I’m the only one on this stage who’d done it. For seven years I ran the fifth largest office in this country, at the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, and we set records for the number of prosecutions that we brought that still have not been broken. And the reason was that we went after the crime that was affecting people’s lives.

And as president, I will appoint an attorney general and instruct that attorney general that you are to put all the resources that are necessary to bring our cities back under control. The fact is, they will be stretched. There’s no doubt about that. But that’s what they take the job for because they love the idea of enforcing the law.

We’ve got to bring law and order back to this country. And not just in our cities. But we need law and order back everywhere. We need law and order back in our suburbs. People are threatened there. We need it in our rural areas. People feel threatened there. And we need it in Washington, D.C. also.

And Donald Trump should be here to answer for that but he’s not. And I want to look in that camera right now and tell you, Donald, I know you’re watching. You can’t help yourself. I know you’re watching. OK? And you’re not here tonight. Not because of polls and not because of your indictments. You’re not here tonight because you are afraid of being on this stage and depending on your record.

You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen. You keep doing that, no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore. We’re going to call you Donald Duck.

PERINO: All right. I want to ask —

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

PERINO: Governor DeSantis, you fired a couple of prosecutors in your state. But as governor — I mean, sorry, as president, you would not have the ability to do that. How do you think about dealing with the root causes of crime especially this revolving door of the criminals? They just get out and come back and commit another crime.

DESANTIS:  Well, the crime in these cities is — is one of the strongest signs of the decaying of America.

We can’t be successful as a country if people aren’t even safe to live in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Just being in Southern California over the last couple days, my wife and I have met three people who have been mugged on the street, and that would have never happened 10 or 20 years ago.

In Florida, we back the blue. We support the men and women of law enforcement. They are keeping us safe. We have a 50-year low in the crime rate.

(APPLAUSE)

DESANTIS:  And, yes, when I had two progressive prosecutors that weren’t following the law in Florida, I removed them from their posts, and the people of Florida are safer as a result of it.

As president, I will use the Justice Department to bring civil rights cases against all of those left-wing, Soros-funded prosecutors. We’re not going to let them get away with it anymore. We want to reverse this country’s decline…

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

DESANTIS:  … we need to choose law and order over rioting and disorder.

VARNEY:  On a related subject, Governor Haley, there’s a nationwide policing shortage. Retirements are up. Recruitment is in the tank. The morale is at a record low.

Three years ago, you signed a pledge to support law enforcement. Now, pledges are a nice idea, but what’s your actual plan to get more police on our streets?

HALEY:  Well, and I actually did it in South Carolina too.

What we knew in South Carolina was, you take care of those who take care of you. We have to start taking care of law enforcement, but it’s not just taking care of them with words. It’s making sure that you also follow through on what they do.

Right now, we have a lot of stolen guns on the street. Well, these law enforcement officers, they arrest these people, and then they go and they’re let out the very next day. So, law enforcement feels like they don’t — no one has their back.

We have to start prosecuting according to the law. We have to make sure we have the backs of law enforcement, and we have to make sure that we’re a country of law and order.

But I want to go back to China, because I don’t think we spent enough time on that. Right now, we have to look at what government is doing to hurt us against China too. You have a company, USAntibiotics, that produces amoxicillin, the number one antibiotic that we need.

And, right now, there is a company in Bristol, Tennessee, that produces that, yet our federal government only gets it from China. We need to be focusing on companies that produce in America and supporting those companies that produce in America, not companies that are helping China.

(APPLAUSE)

VARNEY:  Governor, we will be talking foreign policy later.

Ilia.

CALDERON:  Thank you.

Well, we’re going to stay in the topic of crime, because it affects all of us.

Governor Burgum, for the first time ever, a Univision poll found that mass shootings and gun safety are one of the most important issue for Latino voters. Mental health concerns are not unique to the United States, but gun violence is.

What is your specific plan to curb gun violence?

BURGUM:  Well, first, we need to know and understand is, I think that the liberal left is — seems to be just completely bent on prosecuting law-abiding citizens that are gun owners, because every solution they have to this is take away the Second Amendment rights of Americans and somehow that’s going to solve the problem.

But all these cities that we’re talking about, that showed the videos of tonight, they have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. So we know that that’s not what’s working. What we have to do is get back to the core issues about the family. We have to get back to behavioral health and mental health.

We have got to get back to actually enforcing the laws these people talked about, and like we have done in North Dakota, where we’re — we have got the goal and we’re on the track to be the most military-friendly state in the nation. We have got the most military and the most support of what we’re doing in terms of law enforcement, because the — the morale is down because we have been defunding the police, because they have been attacked in the press.

The police have become the bad guys, when they’re the one — they — there’s all these jobs available in America. Why would you be a policeman if people don’t even respect them?

Every time I see a policeman, the first thing I say is, thank you. And so does everybody else in my family and most of the people in our state, because they know we have to respect the people that are out there defending us every single day.

(APPLAUSE)

PENCE:  Can I answer the question on mass shootings?

CALDERON:  Mr. Ramaswamy, Mr. Ramaswamy, according to Customs and Border Protection, about 90 percent of fentanyl is seized at official border crossings, and 57 percent of the smugglers are U.S. citizens.

How would you stop fentanyl brought into the country, mostly by U.S. citizens through ports of entry?

RAMASWAMY:  There’s two sides to this, and we have to be very honest about it.

One is, we do have to seal that Southern border. Building the wall is not enough. They’re building cartel-financed tunnels underneath that wall. Semitrucks can drive through them. We have to use our own military to seal the Swiss cheese of a Southern border.

But we also have to be honest. There’s a demand-side problem in this country too, a mental health epidemic.

I met a family in Iowa, two parents, Kathy and Deric. They lost their son Sebastian, 17 years old. He bought Percocet on Snapchat and then he died.  Why did he die?  Because it was laced with fentanyl.  That is closer to bio-terrorism, not a drug overdose.  That is poisoning.

So it is our job to make sure that never happens.  But it’s also our job to make sure that 17-year-olds don’t turn to Percocet via Snapchat.  We have to bring back mental health care in this country, not with pumping pharmaceuticals, but faith-based approaches that restore purpose and meaning in the next generation of Americans.  

Many of them are getting it through social media.  And this isn’t a Republican point or a Democrat point.  But if you’re 16 years old or under, you should not be using an addictive social media product, period.  This is something that we can both agree on and we can revive both…

(BELL SOUNDS)

RAMASWAMY:  … the mental health of this country while stopping the fentanyl epidemic that will kill more people this year than who died on 9/11.  And I refuse to be a passive bystander sitting in the White House like the hollowed-out husk of the current president we have.  We will step up and address this problem to stand for Americans and our children.  

(APPLAUSE)

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO:  I want to go to Vice President Pence next.  

(CROSSTALK)

DESANTIS:  That is why — everything he said I agree with.  That is why, as commander-in-chief, I’m going to use the U.S. military to go after the Mexican drug cartels.  

(APPLAUSE)

DESANTIS:  They are killing our people.  And the stories that I’ve seen, in Florida, we had an infant, 18 months, parents rented an Airbnb.  And apparently the people that had rented before were using drugs.  The infant was crawling — the toddler was crawling on the carpet and ingested fentanyl residue and died.  

Are we just going to sit here and let this happen, this carnage happen in our country?  I am not going to do that.  So I guarantee you, on day one, this border is going to be a day one issue for me as president.  We’re going to declare it a national emergency.  Yes, we’ll build the wall.  We’ll do “remain in Mexico.” But those Mexican drug cartels are going to be treated like the foreign terrorist organizations that they are.  

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO:  All right.  I’m going to go to Vice — I’m going to Vice President Pence.

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO:  All right.  Vice President Pence — we’re going to move on to a different issue.  

Hold on, sir.

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO:  Vice President Pence, just last month, Vice President Pence, you said if elected you would repeal all Obamacare mandates.  However, you also made that same promise in 2016.  And at that time, Trump-Pence had congressional majorities for at least the first two years and you did not deliver on that promise.  So Obamacare right now, it is more popular than ever.  Why should Americans trust you if you become president to fix that or is Obamacare here to stay?  

PENCE:  Well, first let me speak to the mass shootings issue and then I’ll answer that question, it’s an important one, Dana.  

Look, I’m someone that believes that justice delayed is justice denied.  And as a father of three, as a grandfather of three beautiful little girls, I am sick and tired of these mass shootings happening in the United States of America.  And if I’m president of the United States, I’m going to go to the Congress of the United States and we’re going to pass a federal expedited death penalty for anyone involved in a mass shooting so that they will meet their fate in months, not years.  

It is unconscionable that the — the Parkland shooter, Ron, is actually going to spend the rest of his life behind bars in Florida.  That’s not justice.  We have to mete out justice and send a message to these would-be killers that you are not going to live out your days behind bars.  

PERINO:  I appreciate that.  

PENCE:  You’re going to meet justice in the system.  

PERINO:  But does that mean Obamacare is here to stay?  

(LAUGHTER)

PENCE:  Well, thank you for reiterating the question because I’d love to answer it.  Look…

PERINO:  You’ve got 30 seconds.

PENCE:  … I think it’s one of the — I think it’s one of the choices here.  You know, my former running mate, Donald T      rump, actually has a plan to start to consolidate more power in Washington, D.C., consolidate more power in the executive branch.  When I’m president of the United States, it’s my intention to make the federal government smaller by returning to the states those resources and programs that are rightfully theirs under Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.  

That means all Obamacare funding, all housing funding, all HHS funding, all of it goes back to the states.  We’ll shut down the federal Department of Education.  We’ll allow states to innovate.  We’re going to revive federalism…

(BELL SOUNDS)

PENCE:  … in America and states are going to help bring America back.  

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO:  … Obamacare staying.  

But, Stu, go ahead.  

VARNEY:  May I remind everyone to keep within their time frame so that we can get as many questions in as possible.  

(CROSSTALK)

This question for Governor DeSantis.  Over 26 million Americans…

(CROSSTALK)

VARNEY:  … can — don’t have insurance coverage.  Governor DeSantis, 2.5 million of them are in your state.  That’s worse than the national average.  Can Americans trust you on this?  

DESANTIS:  Well, I think this is a symptom of our overall economic decline.  Everything has gotten more expensive.  You see insurance rates going through the roof.  People that are going to get groceries, I’ve spoken with a woman in Iowa. And she said, you know, for the first time in my life, I’m having to take things out of my grocery cart when I get to the checkout line —

VIVEK RAMASWAMY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  We got the hell out of there.

And when I started my next company, Strive —  

(CROSSTALK)

NIKKI HALEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  Right before you ran for president?

RAMASWAMY:  That’s years ago.

(CROSSTALK)

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  2023, 2023.

RAMASWAMY:  Right when I started my next company, Strive, to compete against Blackrock —  

SCOTT:  It’s a debate.

RAMASWAMY:  Excuse me.

SCOTT:  No, no. It’s a debate between you and you.

(CROSSTALK)

RAMASWAMY:  To compete against Blackrock, I made a commitment that we would never do business in China. And I will say something —  

(CROSSTALK)

ILIA CALDERON, DEBATE MODERATOR:  Mr. Ramaswamy, I think you have more than time to explain your point.

RAMASWAMY:  Well, if I — I was interrupted by a lot of people here and I want to be respectful because I believe —  

(CROSSTALK)

SCOTT:  I’ve been — yeah, you were respectful in the last debate.

RAMASWAMY:  But I do not believe in this — we’re sitting here in the Reagan Library.

SCOTT:  Yes, I wish —  

(CROSSTALK)

SCOTT:  — midnight in America.

(CROSSTALK)

RAMASWAMY:  And the honor of Ronald Reagan’s library, if I may. From one — Tim, from one admirer of Ronald Reagan to another —

SCOTT:  Listen, all I’m asking you. I’m asking you —

RAMASWAMY:  From one admirer of Ronald Reagan to another, we cannot —

(CROSSTALK)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  This is unproductive, I want  

(CROSSTALK)

RAMASWAMY:  Let’s have a policy debate —

DESANTIS:  — understand what’s going on.

(CROSSTALK)

RAMASWAMY:  Let’s have a policy debate, and the right answer is —  

(CROSSTALK)

CALDERON:  Mr. Ramaswamy, I have a question for Vice President Pence. Thank you very much.

RAMASWAMY:  — we need to declare independence from China, and I will say that through.

CALDERON:  Vice President Pence, in 2017, the Trump-Pence administration canceled DACA, which put the legal status of 600,000 Dreamers in the hands of the court. Dreamers work and they pay taxes.

As president, if the Supreme Court ends DACA, would you work with Congress to reach a permanent solution for Dreamers?

MIKE PENCE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  First, let me say, I’m glad — I’m glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in 2018 in China. That must have been about the time you decided to start voting in presidential elections. So, nice to have you participate in elections.

(CROSSTALK)

PENCE:  So, let me — let me speak to this issue. Number one, I negotiated the “Remain in Mexico” policy with the Mexican government. We used economic power to bring the Mexican government to the table. We built hundreds of miles of border wall and despite what’s said here today, we reduced illegal immigration and asylum abuse by 90 percent.

And as president of the United States, I can do it again.

(CROSSTALK)

PENCE:  And truth is what — the truth is we need to fix a broken immigration system and I’ll do that as well.

But first and foremost, a nation without borders is not a nation. And we have to secure the southern border of the United States of America, I know how to do it and we will do it again.

Let me say one other thing about China.

(APPLAUSE)

CALDERON:  Vice President —  

PENCE:  Let me say one other thing about China —  

CALDERON:  Vice President, would you negotiate with Congress to give a solution to the problem that Dreamers have right now? They are on a limbo.

PENCE:  Let me tell you, I served in Congress for 12 years, although it seemed longer.

But you know, something I’ve done different than everybody on this stage is I’ve actually — I’ve actually secured reform in Congress.

You know — you know, Ron, you talk a really good game about cutting spending but you’ve increased spending in Florida by 30 percent.

When I was a member of Congress in 2006, right after Hurricane Katrina, Dana, you remember it, we stood our ground. I led House conservatives. We cut $100 billion out of the federal budget.

It can be done, but as I said in the last debate, I’ll say again, this is no time for on the job training. I’m going to be ready on day one to get Congress to step up, secure the southern border of the United States, build a military fitted to our times —  

CALDERON:  Okay, thank you, Mr. Vice President.

PENCE:  — and we’re going to get spending in Washington, D.C. under control once and for all.

(CROSSTALK)

STUART VARNEY, DEBATE MODERATOR:  On the other side of this — I propose to go to a break — how will these candidates make America safer as rising crime plagues our cities? Debate night continues in moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS HOST: And welcome back to the Reagan Library for the second Republican presidential debate. I do want to just remind everyone. There’s one minute for questions, three seconds for a follow-up, and the more we mention each other that means fewer questions you’re going to get.

OK. So we want to talk about crime. This has been a horrendous problem in our country. FOX News and others have been covering it.

Governor Christie, crime in major cities is striking fear into the hearts of Americans. Just last night, looters took over the streets of Philadelphia. You said in the last debate that you would use U.S. attorneys to prosecute crimes local prosecutors won’t. But they are stretched as well and they could not handle all of the lawlessness, the shoplifting, all the carjackings, the armed robberies. They are all surging.

Progressive prosecutors were elected by their constituents and they can’t be fired by a president. So what would you do to end the revolving door of criminality?

CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, look, Dana, I’m the only one on this stage who’d done it. For seven years I ran the fifth largest office in this country, at the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, and we set records for the number of prosecutions that we brought that still have not been broken. And the reason was that we went after the crime that was affecting people’s lives.

And as president, I will appoint an attorney general and instruct that attorney general that you are to put all the resources that are necessary to bring our cities back under control. The fact is, they will be stretched. There’s no doubt about that. But that’s what they take the job for because they love the idea of enforcing the law.

We’ve got to bring law and order back to this country. And not just in our cities. But we need law and order back everywhere. We need law and order back in our suburbs. People are threatened there. We need it in our rural areas. People feel threatened there. And we need it in Washington, D.C. also.

And Donald Trump should be here to answer for that but he’s not. And I want to look in that camera right now and tell you, Donald, I know you’re watching. You can’t help yourself. I know you’re watching. OK? And you’re not here tonight. Not because of polls and not because of your indictments. You’re not here tonight because you are afraid of being on this stage and depending on your record.

You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen. You keep doing that, no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore. We’re going to call you Donald Duck.

PERINO: All right. I want to ask —

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

PERINO: Governor DeSantis, you fired a couple of prosecutors in your state. But as governor — I mean, sorry, as president, you would not have the ability to do that. How do you think about dealing with the root causes of crime especially this revolving door of the criminals? They just get out and come back and commit another crime.

DESANTIS:  Well, the crime in these cities is — is one of the strongest signs of the decaying of America.

We can’t be successful as a country if people aren’t even safe to live in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Just being in Southern California over the last couple days, my wife and I have met three people who have been mugged on the street, and that would have never happened 10 or 20 years ago.

In Florida, we back the blue. We support the men and women of law enforcement. They are keeping us safe. We have a 50-year low in the crime rate.

(APPLAUSE)

DESANTIS:  And, yes, when I had two progressive prosecutors that weren’t following the law in Florida, I removed them from their posts, and the people of Florida are safer as a result of it.

As president, I will use the Justice Department to bring civil rights cases against all of those left-wing, Soros-funded prosecutors. We’re not going to let them get away with it anymore. We want to reverse this country’s decline…

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

DESANTIS:  … we need to choose law and order over rioting and disorder.

VARNEY:  On a related subject, Governor Haley, there’s a nationwide policing shortage. Retirements are up. Recruitment is in the tank. The morale is at a record low.

Three years ago, you signed a pledge to support law enforcement. Now, pledges are a nice idea, but what’s your actual plan to get more police on our streets?

HALEY:  Well, and I actually did it in South Carolina too.

What we knew in South Carolina was, you take care of those who take care of you. We have to start taking care of law enforcement, but it’s not just taking care of them with words. It’s making sure that you also follow through on what they do.

Right now, we have a lot of stolen guns on the street. Well, these law enforcement officers, they arrest these people, and then they go and they’re let out the very next day. So, law enforcement feels like they don’t — no one has their back.

We have to start prosecuting according to the law. We have to make sure we have the backs of law enforcement, and we have to make sure that we’re a country of law and order.

But I want to go back to China, because I don’t think we spent enough time on that. Right now, we have to look at what government is doing to hurt us against China too. You have a company, USAntibiotics, that produces amoxicillin, the number one antibiotic that we need.

And, right now, there is a company in Bristol, Tennessee, that produces that, yet our federal government only gets it from China. We need to be focusing on companies that produce in America and supporting those companies that produce in America, not companies that are helping China.

(APPLAUSE)

VARNEY:  Governor, we will be talking foreign policy later.

Ilia.

CALDERON:  Thank you.

Well, we’re going to stay in the topic of crime, because it affects all of us.

Governor Burgum, for the first time ever, a Univision poll found that mass shootings and gun safety are one of the most important issue for Latino voters. Mental health concerns are not unique to the United States, but gun violence is.

What is your specific plan to curb gun violence?

BURGUM:  Well, first, we need to know and understand is, I think that the liberal left is — seems to be just completely bent on prosecuting law-abiding citizens that are gun owners, because every solution they have to this is take away the Second Amendment rights of Americans and somehow that’s going to solve the problem.

But all these cities that we’re talking about, that showed the videos of tonight, they have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. So we know that that’s not what’s working. What we have to do is get back to the core issues about the family. We have to get back to behavioral health and mental health.

We have got to get back to actually enforcing the laws these people talked about, and like we have done in North Dakota, where we’re — we have got the goal and we’re on the track to be the most military-friendly state in the nation. We have got the most military and the most support of what we’re doing in terms of law enforcement, because the — the morale is down because we have been defunding the police, because they have been attacked in the press.

The police have become the bad guys, when they’re the one — they — there’s all these jobs available in America. Why would you be a policeman if people don’t even respect them?

Every time I see a policeman, the first thing I say is, thank you. And so does everybody else in my family and most of the people in our state, because they know we have to respect the people that are out there defending us every single day.

(APPLAUSE)

PENCE:  Can I answer the question on mass shootings?

CALDERON:  Mr. Ramaswamy, Mr. Ramaswamy, according to Customs and Border Protection, about 90 percent of fentanyl is seized at official border crossings, and 57 percent of the smugglers are U.S. citizens.

How would you stop fentanyl brought into the country, mostly by U.S. citizens through ports of entry?

RAMASWAMY:  There’s two sides to this, and we have to be very honest about it.

One is, we do have to seal that Southern border. Building the wall is not enough. They’re building cartel-financed tunnels underneath that wall. Semitrucks can drive through them. We have to use our own military to seal the Swiss cheese of a Southern border.

But we also have to be honest. There’s a demand-side problem in this country too, a mental health epidemic.

I met a family in Iowa, two parents, Kathy and Deric. They lost their son Sebastian, 17 years old. He bought Percocet on Snapchat and then he died.  Why did he die?  Because it was laced with fentanyl.  That is closer to bio-terrorism, not a drug overdose.  That is poisoning.

So it is our job to make sure that never happens.  But it’s also our job to make sure that 17-year-olds don’t turn to Percocet via Snapchat.  We have to bring back mental health care in this