Nikki Haley grins as Vivek Ramaswamy is BOOED by Alabama crowd for holding up a sign calling her 'corrupt' - after he compared her campaign launch to a 'woke Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light ad'

Former U.N. Amb. Nikki Haley slipped into a grin as Vivek Ramaswamy was booed by the audience at the Republicans' fourth primary debate for calling her 'corrupt' - and holding up a notepad spelling it out. 

Ramaswamy, as he had at previous debates, took several particularly nasty swipes at Haley – including the charge that she was deploying 'identity politics' for playing up the fact that she's a woman during her 2024 run. 

The 38-year-old tech entrepreneur claimed that Haley's launch video 'sounded like a woke Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light ad talking about how she would kick in heels.' 

'At the first debate, she said only a woman could get this job done,' Ramaswamy said. 'After the third debate when I criticized Ronna McDaniel for five failed years of leadership of this party, and criticized Nikki for her corrupt foreign dealings as a military contractor, she said that I had a 'woman problem.'' 

'Maybe I don't have a woman problem, you have a corruption problem,' he charged. 

Ramaswamy had scrawled something on his notepad at the top of the debate. 

He showed it off to the audience at that moment: 'Nikki = Corrupt.' 

'And I think that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt,' he said, holding up the tablet.   

Ramaswamy was booed, as Haley tried not to smile. 

When moderator Eliana Johnson asked Haley if she wanted to respond, she demurred.

'No, it's not worth my time to respond to him,' she said. 

Later Ramaswamy's senior adviser and communications director Tricia McLaughlin told DailyMail.com that the 'Nikki = Corrupt' sign was planned.

'I think that we had kind of fooled around with it. It's very meme-able. And he ended up doing it. It was pretty last minute.'

'He probably wrote down other notes, but that was the most important note,' she said. 

For the bulk of the debate, Haley had an ally in New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who furiously defended her from another Ramaswamy attack – that she wouldn't be able to point out certain Ukrainian provinces on a map. 

Ramaswamy talked about how there needed to be a 'reasonable peace deal' in Ukraine's war with Russia, and then turned to Haley saying that she and President Joe Biden were among the only two politicians to believe in the 'pointless war.' 

'One thing that Joe Biden and Nikki Haley have in common is that neither of them could even state for you three provinces in Eastern Ukraine that they want to send our troops to actually fight for,' Ramaswamy said.  

'She has no idea what the hell the names of those provinces are that she wants to send our sons and daughters and our troops and our military equipment to go fight,' he continued.

'So reject this myth that they've been selling you – that somebody had a cup of coffee, a stint at the UN, and makes 8 million bucks after – has real foreign policy experience,' the millionaire author added.

Haley remained stonefaced throughout the attack. 

'Look at the blank expression,' Ramaswamy said. 'She doesn't know the names of the provinces.' 

He argued that his 'outsider' status gives him an elevated perspective. 

When it was Christie's turn, the former New Jersey governor called out this attack. 

'This is the fourth debate that you would be voted in the first 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blowhard in America,' he told Ramaswamy. 

Christie labeled Haley a 'smart, accomplished woman.'  

'I want to say something else, we're now 25 minutes into this debate and he has insulted Nikki Haley's basic intelligence, not her positions, her basic intelligence,' he roared. 

'She doesn't know regions, she wouldn't be able to find something on a map that his three-year-old could find,' he listed the insults. 

'Look, if you want to disagree on issues that's fine, and Nikki and I disagree on some issues. But I'll tell you this, I've known her 12 years, which is longer than he's even started to vote in the Republican primaries,' Christie added.