The GOP debate, hosted on CNN in Iowa, with five days to go before the Iowa caucuses, turned into a sniping match between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.

The news right before the debate upended the dynamics of the primary – Chris Christie finally dropped out of the race.

Neither he nor Vivek Ramaswamy had qualified for the debate stage, so he wasn’t going to be present in Iowa. On his way out the door, though, Christie made sure to trash Nikki Haley and might have said something about DeSantis, but the hot mic was cut.

“She’s gonna get smoked and you and I both know it. She’s not up to this,” Christie could be heard saying in apparent reference to Haley.

He also mentioned that DeSantis had contacted him.

“DeSantis called me, petrified that I would…,” Christie said before the audio cut out. New Hampshire campaign chair Wayne MacDonald confirmed to CNN that he was on the other end of the conversation.

According to two sources familiar with the call, DeSantis called Christie to say whatever the former New Jersey governor decided to do, DeSantis appreciated his role in the race. One of the sources disputed Christie’s characterization of DeSantis on the call, calling it “categorically false.”

The same source told CNN that Christie, at the time, did not indicate to DeSantis that he was dropping out. Christie was “defiant” and “bashed” Haley, echoing what Christie was later heard saying on the hot mic, the source said.

This made the GOP debate what it should have been since the second debate – a one-on-one match up between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. The problem with this debate, though, was twofold – one, Donald Trump should be there to defend his record (and both candidates acknowledged that), and two, Haley and DeSantis were bickering with each other like divorced parents in court trying to split up the kids and the household assets.

Credit should go to Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, the moderators. Obviously, they had a much easier time handling two candidates on a stage than a larger crowd. But they asked good questions, kept the candidates on track, and kept both Haley and DeSantis from cross-talking.

But Nikki Haley came off as single-minded and annoying. Both candidates were essentially arguing nuance, not drastic policy differences. But Haley has a website – did you know she has a website? Apparently, she has a website called DeSantis Lies, and Haley must have mentioned it at least once every five minutes.

Remember that comparison of Nikki Haley to John Kerry by a kid in New Hampshire? During this debate, Haley mentioned her attack website on DeSantis as much, if not more, than Kerry mentioned his service in Vietnam during the 2004 presidental election! That is NOT a good look, Ambassador!

And everyone noticed.

I’m afraid she hasn’t mentioned it enough times

— Roscoe Jethroe (@BigDon42069) January 11, 2024

Haley has drastically overplayed this website thing. It has become more annoying than anything Vivek ever did in a debate, and that's a high bar. #CNNdebate

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) January 11, 2024

Maybe defend your own record instead of just sending people to a cheap political tactic.

— Shadow Governor Vos (@Robin_Vos_Stan) January 11, 2024

I told my colleagues at @NRO once it first started up that I'd drink a shot of whiskey every time Nikki Haley mentioned "DeSantisLies-dot-com" and now unfortunately I am permanently blind.

— Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* (@EsotericCD) January 11, 2024

And it was exhausting. And aggravating. And it was way, way too much. When the question was even not about DeSantis, but Trump, Haley felt the need to harp on telling DeSantis to “stop lying.”

Nikki Haley did well as United Nations ambassador, and she would easily be a better president than Joe Biden. But she did not win any friends during this debate, and she annoyed a whole lot of people in the process of pimping her attack website. WE GOT IT, NIKKI. We don’t need to hear the website address in every other sentence!

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click