CLIVE, Iowa—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on May 30 in the first formal stump speech of his 2024 presidential campaign that former President Donald Trump has “moved left” on federal spending, abortion, and crime; gives only lip service to the “America First” policies that he failed to implement when in office; and can’t win a general election.
“There are a lot of voters that just aren’t going to ever vote for him,” DeSantis said in Iowa. “We just have to accept that.”
He didn’t directly criticize the former president during his hour-long address before about 750 people, including 200 who watched on monitors in the lobby of Eternity Church, a suburban Pentecostal congregation in the Des Moines suburb of Clive.
But in a news conference afterward, in response to Trump’s claim on Truth Social that Florida was the “third WORST State in Deaths by Covid” and that “New York had fewer deaths!” the governor returned the volley.
“I’m going to fight back,” DeSantis said. “The former president is now attacking me saying that [former New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo did better handling COVID than Florida did. I can tell you this: I could count the number of Republicans in this country on my hands that would rather have lived in New York under Cuomo than lived in Florida in our freedom zone.”
“Hell, [Trump’s] whole family moved to Florida under my governorship; are you kidding me?”
He said he isn’t going to make his campaign about Trump but a referendum on what he described as the failed Democratic policies of President Joe Biden. However, Trump is focused on his Republican opponents, and that’s starting to wear thin on many “in a way that the voters are going to side with me,” he said.
Kickoff Tour Begins, Ends in Iowa
The speech was DeSantis’s first formal campaign event after declaring his candidacy on May 24 following five months during which he visited 14 states and four countries while not campaigning.
By John Haughey
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