Explained: Why Nikki Haley called Vivek Ramaswamy ‘scum’, what triggered their bitter fight

Indian American tech entrepreneur, Vivek Ramaswamy, and former US envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, broke into a heated war of words after the former dragged the latter’s daughter on Wednesday night’s third Republican presidential debate in Florida.

“In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time. So you might want to take care of your family first,” Ramaswamy said as the candidates clashed over the video-sharing app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.

“Leave my daughter out of your voice... You’re just scum,” Haley shot back with apparent contempt, rolling her eyes and shaking her head.

“You have her supporters propping her up, that’s fine,” Ramaswamy quipped in response.

Haley’s daughter is in her mid-20s, but it’s still very unusual for candidates to bring up their opponents’ families as part of an attack on a debate stage.

The tense exchange came amid the debate over whether to ban the social media app TikTok, which FBI and other national security officials have warned could send personal data to China’s authoritarian government.

What triggered the exchange of barbs?

The acrimony between the two Indian-origin leaders has been brewing since the early Republican debates. At the first debate in Milwaukee, Haley hit out at Ramaswamy for his “limited foreign policy experience”, delivering a scathing critique of his qualifications.

Nearly an hour into the debate, Fox News moderators posed questions on the Ukraine war and asked the eight candidates if they would continue supporting or funding Kyiv in its war against Moscow. While the majority vowed to continue support to Ukraine, Ramaswamy took a defiantly opposite position.

He suggested that supporting Ukraine when the US hadn’t fixed its own problems was “disastrous”. Consequently, Haley accused him of supporting America’s foreign adversaries and abandoning its friends. “He wants to hand Ukraine to Russia, he wants to let China eat Taiwan, he wants to go and stop funding Israel,” said Haley, adding, “You don’t do that to friends. What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends.”

“You have no experience in foreign policy, and it shows,” she said. To which Ramaswamy replied, referring to top US defence contractors: “I wish you well in your future career on the boards of Lockheed [Martin] and Raytheon.”

This initial clash set the stage for a deepening rift between the two candidates, which was further exacerbated at the subsequent debate in California. “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber,” Haley said while responding to Ramaswamy at the second debate. Responding to the broadside, Ramaswamy contended, “We will be better served as a Republican Party if we’re not sitting here hurling personal insults.”

Haley and Ramaswamy took the stage in Miami alongside three other fellow Republican White House contenders: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott.

However, the GOP frontrunner, former US president Donald Trump, who has consistently reigned supreme in every major Republican nomination poll, opted to skip the Republican debate for the third consecutive time, choosing instead to hold a rally just a stone's throw away.

Why did Ramaswamy call Haley ‘Dick Cheney in three-inch heels’?

Ramaswamy went on the offensive against Haley minutes into the third debate as he compared her foreign policy views with those of former Republican vice president Dick Cheney as the candidates deliberated on Israel’s conflict with Hamas.

“Do you want a leader from a different generation, who’s going to put this country first,” he asked. “Or do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels?” Haley shot back at him, saying she wears “five-inch heels” before adding, “And I don’t wear them unless you can run in them.” “I wear heels, they’re not for a fashion statement, they’re for ammunition,” Haley said.

However, Ramaswamy indicated during the exchange that the barb was also directed at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who denied last month in an interview that he wears lifts.

The comparison to Cheney was part of a critique of the rival candidates’ more hawkish foreign policy stances. Haley is a strong proponent of funding Ukraine in its war against Russia, and DeSantis has said he would deploy the US military to the southern border and authorise troops to use lethal force against drug traffickers.

Ramaswamy took aim at Haley when moderator Lester Holt asked as to what the entrepreneur would tell Israeli Prime Minister Benajamin Netanyahu amid the country’s war with Hamas. Taking a swipe at Haley, Ramaswamy said, “She becomes a military contractor. She joins the board of Boeing … and is now a multimillionaire.”