Welcome. It is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you. And it is our debate show. If you

watch the Republican debate, you saw some lively moments. Senator, you watched it. I watched it.

Give me your overall takeaway. Who was the big winner? And was there even a second place?

So you and I are recording this. It is 1141 p.m. East Coast time. I'm in D.C. so the debate just

ended a few minutes ago. I got to say my reaction to it, this was a bumpy debate. There were a lot

of rocky moments. I think most of the candidates

did not help themselves, but my clear conclusion from tonight is the big winner was Ron DeSantis.

Why is that? Well, I did not think that in debate one. So remember, debate one, we came together,

and I said the winners in debate one were Vivek Ramoswamy and Nikki Haley and a little bit Mike Pence and the real winner was Donald Trump because all three of them were elevated and that hurt DeSantis and DeSantis needs to make it a two-man race with Trump. And so that was my take on debate one. I think going into tonight, Desanis needed to do well.

And I think he rose to the occasion. I think he did by far the best of anyone on the stage.

Several reasons. Number one is just the behavior of the others. I think they bickered like children,

and I don't think it helped them.

I think when they were just yelling at each other back and forth and back and forth,

when you see a bunch of people screaming at each other, they don't look like presidents.

They're not behaving like presidents. Presidents don't have to yap at each other.

And I thought there were times, particularly early in the debate, when the debate kind of

got away from the moderators, as the debate went on, the moderators did a better job of getting

a little bit of control of it and having a little bit more discussion. But DeSantis had several,

he had the best answers of the night. The single best answer of the night was his answer on education. And he was the best answers of the night the single best answer of the night

was his answer on education and he was the the topic came up about education it came up about

school choice and he gave a strong powerful answer about school choice about how number one

florida implemented universal school choice florida's led the country in school choice, so they've got a heck of a record to talk about. He was asked about the

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