Casting himself as the lone Republican hopeful, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis once again verbally attacked former President Donald Trump for being overly mired in the past and positioned himself as the one who could beat President Joe Biden in a general election. “You also need a nominee who can win. And I think the way you win is to focus the election on Biden’s failures. And our positive vision for the future,” DeSantis stated on Thursday at a discussion led by Blake Burman of The Hill on NewsNation at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
DeSantis claimed that even if Trump were elected, his term as president would be short on accomplishments. “If the election is about all these other issues, then it’s going to give the Democrats a huge advantage,” he added. “It’s going to give the media an ability to drive that in, and they will do that, they’ll change their tune on all this, you watch, if the former president is the nominee. So we want it to be an election on Biden and us as the positive just like it was for Reagan versus Carter in 1980,” the 2024 presidential candidate added. DeSantis also expressed skepticism about Trump’s capacity to assemble a robust bureaucracy, citing his past bad performance and his tendency to “throw people under the bus” in his role as president.
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“I think you want somebody who has the track record of delivering on the promises,” he said. “He’s promising the same stuff this time except the special counsels for Biden. So it’s like ‘Okay, well, wait a minute, you’re running on the same stuff.’ You didn’t do it the first time, you’d be a lame duck if you could even get elected and all that.”
DeSantis added, “Why not give somebody a chance who is going to spit nails from day one, who is going to be energetic, is going to be forceful, disciplined, focused and deliver for you? It’s not about me, it’s about you.” However, in the GOP primary, DeSantis is faring worse than Trump in surveys, with an average of 13 percent supporting him compared to Trump’s 57 percent in the FiveThirtyEight average. Taking an aim further, DeSantis claimed that by asserting he had no means of holding Mexico accountable, Trump, the Republican front-runner for president in 2024, was “rationalizing that failure.”
“I do think when he’s saying things, like in Iowa the other day that well, you know, he couldn’t follow his campaign promise to have Mexico … pay for the border wall because there was, quote, no legal mechanism he could have used to have Mexico pay,” DeSantis exclusively stated during an interview on The Hill on NewsNation . “He’s rationalizing that failure.”
“The problem is that was his main campaign promise,” DeSantis said. “I was at the rallies. It was fun. Everyone was cheering that.” He continued, “When he’s saying that he couldn’t get the job done, look, I wanted to send the message: I will get the job done. I’m not going to make excuses,” the governor said. “We’re done with the excuses. We’ve got to figure out a way to do it.” He continued, “And I will deal with the border. I’ll have the wall,” adding, “We’ll take on the drug cartels, which is really what should have happened a long time ago.”
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“There actually was a way he could have done that. He could have imposed fees,” he said. “And I will do this as president.” He further said, “You could have imposed fees on the remittances that people send to foreign countries, Mexico included,” adding, “That would raise millions of dollars.”