Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is denying calling for the verification of social media users by name. On Nov. 14, the GOP presidential candidate had said during a town hall with Fox News host Harris Faulkner that “every person on social media should be verified by their name.”

During the fourth Republican primary debate on Wednesday, rival Vivek Ramaswamy brought up the remarks, which had earned the former UN ambassador heavy backlash.

“We’re marching toward fascism under Biden, Jack Smith has subpoenaed every last Retweet that someone has issued from Donald Trump in the year 2020. The only person more fascist than the Biden regime now is Nikki Haley who thinks the government should identify every one of those individuals with an ID,” Ramaswamy said.

“That is not freedom, that is fascism, and she should come nowhere near the levels of power, let alone the White House,” he added.

Responding to Ramaswamy’s attack, Haley maintained that she will “always fight for freedom of speech for Americans.”

“We do not need freedom of speech for Russians and Iranians and Hamas. We need social media companies to go back and fight back on all of these bots that are happening, that’s what I said,” she stated further.

She then attempted to water down the suggestion of name verification to her opinion as a mother, claiming that she did not outrightly ask the government to do that.

In her words, “As a mom, do I think that social media would be more civil if we went and had people’s names next to that? Yes, I do think that because I think we got too much cyberbullying…But having said that, I never said the government should go and require anyone’s names.”

But Ramaswamy was not having it, and neither was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who entered the fray at this point. While Ramaswamy interjected, “That’s false,” DeSantis tried to remind her of what she said, recalling, “You said, ‘I want your name.’ As president of the United States, her first day in office, she said, ‘One of the first things I’m going to do: all social medias, I want your names.’ That’s what she said. That’s what she said. You can roll the tapes.”

In November, Haley had said, “When I get into office, the first thing we have to do, social media accounts — social media companies, they have to show America their algorithms. Let us see why they’re pushing what they’re pushing. The second thing is every person on social media should be verified by their name.”

“When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say, and it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots, and the Chinese bots. And then you’re gonna get some civility when people know their name is next to what they say, and they know their pastor and their family member’s gonna see it. It’s gonna help our kids and it’s gonna help our country,” she added.

Amid the several voices of criticism against her proposal was that of DeSantis, who called the proposal “dangerous and unconstitutional.”

“You know who were anonymous writers back in the day? Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison when they wrote the Federalist Papers,” he wrote on X.

“They were not ‘national security threats,’ nor are the many conservative Americans across the country who exercise their Constitutional right to voice their opinions without fear of being harassed or canceled by the school they go to or the company they work for,” he added, promising that the proposal would have no place in an administration where he is president.

Ramaswamy also weighed in to call the proposal “a flagrant violation of the Constitution and straight out of the Democrats’ playbook.”

“Any politician who thinks it’s OK for the government to use the private sector as its censorship bureau shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the White House,” he added.