During an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier on Monday, Florida governor Ron DeSantis dismissed criticism from veteran GOP strategist Ed Rollins that he is a “very flawed candidate.”
Rollins once chaired the pro-Trump Great America PAC but later served as co-chairman of the Ready for Ron PAC, which supported DeSantis’s entry into the race. However, he told Rolling Stone recently that he is “not involved” in efforts to elect DeSantis now.
“I don’t think it’s the campaign’s fault at all; it’s his. . . . I think he’s been a very flawed candidate. I know some of the people around him, and some of them are good, talented people,” Rollins told the outlet.
“But every time he opens his mouth, he has a tendency to — shall we say — think out-loud, and he clearly doesn’t understand the game,” Rollins said. “When you get into these culture wars the way that he has, the vast majority of people don’t understand what they are.”
Rollins said “at this point in time” he would be “shocked if Trump were not the nominee.” He suggested that President Biden would win reelection “unless something serious happens.”
During an interview on Monday, Baier asked DeSantis about Rollins’s comments.
“Well it’s obviously nonsense,” DeSantis replied. “I mean, I came into a state that had been decided by one point for a generation. You’ve covered some of those races. I govern boldly. I govern unapologetically. I delivered big results, and we won by 20 points. You don’t win a state like Florida that big if you’re not doing things that are resonating.”
“And I would push back — when I hear about things, ‘Oh, culture war’ — standing up for the rights of parents, standing up for the well-being of children, that’s not some ‘culture war,’” DeSantis said. “That is central to the lives of tens of millions of people throughout this country. It is the right thing to do to stand with our kids.”
He went on to say he rejects the suggestion that in the early-primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, voters don’t think these issues are important.
DeSantis also defended Florida from the criticism it has received from both the Right and Left over the state’s new standards for teaching African-American studies. Critics have seized on a line in the curriculum that mentions teaching students that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” and requires teaching about “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”
The standards have been criticized by Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, but also by Republicans, including several 2024 contenders: Senator Tim Scott, Chris Christie, and Will Hurd.
Baier asked DeSantis if the fight over the standards is one worth having.
“We didn’t pick the fight,” DeSantis said, noting that Harris took a taxpayer-funded flight to Florida and gave a speech attacking the new standards.
“You can’t bend the knee to the Left’s lies,” he said, adding that Democrats have been lying and creating “phony narratives” for years and years and that those lies require pushback.
He accused his critics of taking something “out of context” and mangling it. “I feel a need to defend my state,” he said, adding that if he weren’t running for president, no one would care about the new standards.