DeSantis went after Trump on a media call for supporting ‘amnesty’ while getting ‘a pittance’ from Democrats in return.
Former president Donald Trump is undisciplined and easily distracted.
During his four years as president, he grew the national debt by nearly $8 trillion, yet he still couldn’t manage to complete his long-championed border wall with Mexico
He’s nurtured a culture of losing within the Republican Party. He’s still obsessed with his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. He’s more interested in being an entertainer and building his brand than governing. And he’s toxic with independents. And because of that, he’s a sure loser in 2024.
That is the portrait that Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been quietly painting of Trump as he launches his own presidential campaign to take down his one-time ally.
But his swipes at Trump so far have mostly been veiled, typically delivered between the lines. DeSantis has yet to engage in a gloves-off, full-throated attack on the former president, who still has a steel grip on the GOP and has a massive lead in the national polls.
During his glitchy campaign launch on Twitter DeSantis never mentioned Trump by name, though it was clear who he was talking about when he declared it was time to “end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years” and that “we must look forward, not backward.” Unlike unnamed others, DeSantis said he doesn’t “care about fanfare.”
“Governing is not entertainment. It’s not about building a brand or virtue signaling. It’s about delivering results,” the governor said, in another insider swipe at the former president.
DeSantis was a little more pointed during a post-announcement call with conservative journalists on Wednesday evening. He accused Trump of engaging in reckless spending during his presidency. The former president, he said, is attacking him for not backing a spending plan that Trump supported while DeSantis was in Congress. He called it an “omnibus spending bill.”
“He added almost $8 trillion to the debt in a four-year period of time,” DeSantis said. “I’m happy to be on the conservative side of that debate.”
DeSantis said he’s also being attacked by Trump for not supporting a plan in 2018 that would have provided a path to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants, “dreamers,” in exchange for a $25 billion “trust fund” for border wall and security funding.
“He said it was voting against the wall, but if you remember that bill it was like a pittance for that in exchange for a massive amnesty,” DeSantis said on the post-announcement call. “I oppose amnesty. That was supposed to be America First policy to oppose amnesty, yet he endorsed and tried to ram through amnesty.”
DeSantis took a subtle jab at Trump when asked how long it would take him to complete the border wall, noting that he was able to get a pair of bridges repaired in days – not months – after Hurricane Ian hit southwest Florida last year.
“It’s cutting through red tape. It’s telling people not to make excuses. And just getting the job done,” he said, before the veiled dig. “You just have to be disciplined. You can’t get distracted on this stuff.”
DeSantis said Republican voters just want to see an end to the decades of chaos on the southern border. “There’s been a lot of promises about it, but yet here we are, it’s as bad as it’s ever been,” he said, adding that if he’s elected president “it will get done. Which is more than has happened in the past.”
DeSantis said he’s not worried about the polls that show Trump with a more-than 30-point lead in the Republican primary. “I would be shocked if the former president wasn’t leading,” he said. “He’s 100 percent name ID, one of the most famous people in the world, and had been president of the United States.”
It’s likely that DeSantis will go after Trump and his other Republican rivals more in the coming weeks and months. Because of his work in Florida during the just concluded legislative session, he said he “didn’t necessarily have the ability to be fighting all these battles nationally.”
He expects the attack will continue from “corporate media” and from other Republicans, but, he said, “I think we’ll be in a position where we’ll be fighting back and doing it very effectively.”
DeSantis said he believes Republicans will rally around him if he wins the Republican nomination: “It’s not like I’m taking policy positions that are alienating massive segments of Republicans.”
Just as important, he said, he believes he can win independents like he, Georgia governor Brian Kemp, and Iowa governor Kim Reynolds did last year, but – in another veiled dig at Trump – “we were not able to win in 2020 or in 2022 in the majority of these House and Senate races that were really, really significant.” Trump has been accused by many of being an electoral drag in recent elections, helping to sink two 2020 Senate runoffs in Georgia, costing Republican control of the upper chamber, and of endorsing a slate of troubled candidates who floundered last year.
“I think that there’s millions of people that want to move on from Biden, and I think that they’re ripe for us to be able to get,” DeSantis said. “But I think you’ve got to have a vehicle that they’re comfortable with.” DeSantis does not view Trump as that vehicle.
In a recent phone call with donors, DeSantis similarly said Trump likely couldn’t win the presidency in 2024, “based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him.”
DeSantis said he views Biden as a “weak candidate” with a “weak record.” He said he believes that Democrats won’t be enthusiastic to vote again for the 80-year-old.
“In Florida, we demoralized the Democrats. They did not have a good turnout running against me as governor,” he said, adding “there’s some possibility” he could win Democratic votes.
As for Trump? “I think obviously Trump would turn out Democrats,” he said.