Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came out swinging Tuesday night against GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, calling out the former president’s failures while in office and repeating earlier criticism that Trump had “moved left.”
DeSantis, 44, muted his criticisms when speaking to an audience in Clive at his first formal campaign event but directed rhetorical fire at Trump on immigration issues, COVID policy and other conservative priorities while speaking with reporters later in the evening.
“Unfortunately, he’s decided to move left on some of these issues,” DeSantis said of the 76-year-old 45th president. “He used to say how great Florida was. … Hell, his whole family moved to Florida under my governorship!”
DeSantis went so far as to compare Trump’s 2024 candidacy with the leadership of disgraced ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom Trump recently praised for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic while criticizing DeSantis’ leadership.
“Do you want Cuomo or do you want free Florida?” the governor asked. “If we just decided the caucuses on that, I would be happy with that verdict by Iowa voters.”
DeSantis also accused Trump of failing to “remain true to America First principles” and supporting amnesty for millions of illegal aliens during his presidency.
“I’ve been listening to these politicians talk about securing the border for years and years and years,” he added. “I can tell you, if I’m president, this will finally be the time where we bring this issue to a conclusion.”
DeSantis wasn’t shy either about defending his decision to sign a six-week abortion ban into law — something Trump had said was being perceived as “too harsh” — and positioning himself as the only candidate who could defeat Biden.
“[T]here’s no substitute for victory,” he told reporters. “[T]here are a lot of voters who just aren’t going to ever vote for him.”
DeSantis even shaded the former president’s accomplishments while in office, mocking his use of a vetted list of conservative jurists from which to pick Supreme Court nominees.
“I don’t need someone to give me a list to know what a conservative justice looks like,” he said.
A Trump campaign spokesman countered that DeSantis had only called on pre-selected reporters during the press conference and said he was “not ready for … the major leagues.”
“He’s more of a Class-A Short-Season player,” Steven Cheung tweeted.
In his stump speech, DeSantis did not mention Trump by name, but returned to some earlier criticisms of the former president’s leadership, saying that former top NIH official Dr. Anthony Fauci should have been fired during the pandemic.
“If you are faced with a destructive bureaucrat in your midsts like a Fauci, you do not empower somebody like Fauci, you bring him into the office and you tell him to pack his bags, you are fired,” he told the audience.
The governor also made the case for his candidacy based on Trump being term-limited to a maximum of four years in office and contrasted his military service with the ex-commander-in-chief, saying it was “worth more than anything money can buy.”
Tuesday night’s event marked the first stop on a three-state, 12-city tour of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — the first three Republican nominating states.
