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Fifth Republican Debate Focuses on Expanding Military, Wars

HeadlineDec 16, 2015

The nine leading Republican presidential candidates squared off last night in Las Vegas at the Venetian casino, owned by Republican billionaire backer Sheldon Adelson. It was the first debate since Donald Trump shook up the race by proposing to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Trump has gained an all-time high in a recent national poll. As he criticized the cost of wars in the Middle East Tuesday night, Trump was interrupted by protester Kai Newkirk, who decried billionaire politicians.

Donald Trump: “In my opinion”—

Kai Newkirk: “The American people deserve free and fair elections, not billionaire auctions.”

Wolf Blitzer: “Go ahead, Mr. Trump.”

Donald Trump: “In my opinion, we’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that, frankly, if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges and all of the other problems, our airports and all of the other problems we have, we would have been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now.”

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who has been trailing in the polls, took aim at Donald Trump’s positions, including his proposal to ban Muslims immigrants.

Jeb Bush: “Look, this is not a serious proposal. In fact, it will push the Muslim world, the Arab world, away from us at a time when we need to re-engage with them to be able to create a strategy to destroy ISIS. So, Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners. But he’s a chaos candidate. And he’d be a chaos president. He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe.”

Much of the debate focused on national security, with candidates pushing for increasing the size of the U.S. military, escalating the wars in the Middle East and expanding the power of the National Security Agency. We’ll talk more about last night’s debate after headlines.

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