Donald Trump took his arguments against one-time ally Ron DeSantis on the road Saturday.
The former President entertained a crowd in Waco, Texas, about myriad issues with the man he has called “Ron DeSanctimonious” for months.
Within five minutes, Trump touched on various themes, making the case that the Florida Governor, a runner-up to Trump in most polling, doesn’t measure up — a well-timed tack given DeSantis’ expected foray into the 2024 presidential race.
“They keep saying; I think DeSantis can do OK with farmers. I don’t think so. Based on polls, he’s not doing OK with anything,” Trump said before rehashing statements about DeSantis’ former positions on senior citizen entitlements.
“It’s never good to try and destroy Social Security. It’s never good to raise the minimum age to a very high level which was not good, and to go against Medicare and try and obliterate it. These are a few of the good facts. It’s also not good when you look statistically at how he did on COVID. Not well at all; he’s in a very bad position. Or you look at how he does on crime,” Trump contended, alluding to issues in some of Florida’s major cities.
He wasn’t done by a long shot, returning to COVID-19 in Florida.
“You didn’t have to shut down. But in the case of Florida, they, unfortunately, did shut it down; they shut down the beaches, they shut down everything. So now that people are finding out about what happened, they’re saying, man, he’s dropping like a rock, and I wonder why,” Trump snarked before again recounting the tale of the brokered 2018 endorsement.
“I’m a loyalist. And when a man comes to me (with) tears in his eyes, He’s at almost nothing in the polls, and he’s fighting somebody that’s at 42, and he’s got almost $30 million in the bank. He’s at almost nothing. He’s got no cash. And I said, ‘I can’t give you an endorsement. There’s no way you can win. You’re dead.’”
Despite Trump’s misgivings, he granted the endorsement, as DeSantis fought for him “just a little bit on the impeachment hoax.”
“I didn’t know him very well, but I saw him, so he came, and he really wanted (the endorsement). I said, ‘you can’t win.’”
Trump then quoted DeSantis: “If you endorse me, I’ll win. Please. Please, sir, endorse me.”
“And I said, ‘all right, let’s give it a shot’ because honestly, the Secretary of Agriculture, Adam Putnam, good man, but I never met him. I didn’t know him. So, I don’t feel guilty about it. You know, if you don’t know somebody, I wish I knew him. Actually, you want to know the truth. (If I had known him), I wouldn’t have done this.”
As Trump said, the endorsement turned the moribund DeSantis campaign into a “rocket ship.”
“Within one day, the race was over,” Trump said before retaking credit for DeSantis’ narrow win against Andrew Gillum, “a man that was the hottest in all politics.”
“So, we got him the nomination; we then got him the election. (DeSantis) said, ‘I don’t think I could make it because the other guy was really popular,’ believe it or not, he was going to be the next President of the United States,” Trump alleged.
The former President moved on to another recurrent theme: Florida being better off under previous Governors.
“Remember one thing, Florida has been tremendously successful for many years — long before this guy became Governor. Florida was tremendously successful under Rick Scott. Whether you like him or not, Charlie Crist was very successful. He was a Republican at the time, but Florida has been successful for decades, in fact, probably as or more successful than it is now. But when a man, you know, you get him elected, and there’s no quid pro quo, get rid of that word.”
“He gets the nomination because of you. He wins the election because of you. Two years later, the fake news is up there saying (to DeSantis), ‘Will you run against the President? Will you run?’ and he says, ‘I have no comment.’”
“I say that’s not supposed to happen,” Trump said.
Again, the former President also claimed that DeSantis is “a disciple of Paul Ryan.”
“That’s why he wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare,” Trump contended.
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