(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Dusting off criticisms of a failure to launch Twitter presidential campaign announcement, including a roasting from former President Donald Trump, that nonetheless melted the social media site and raised upwards of $8 million, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came out swinging at an Iowa rally, tossing roundhouses at President Joe Biden and delivering a few jabs towards Trump.
“It is great to be back. And it’s great for me to report that our great American comeback starts by sending Joe Biden back to his basement in Delaware,” DeSantis told an enthusiastic crowd at a suburban church in Des Moines on Tuesday. “I mean, he’s spent so much of his time as president on vacation, we might as well make it permanent.”
The Iowa stump was his first major campaign stop, part of a three-state swing that is slated to hit New Hampshire and South Carolina, the country’s first two presidential primary state.
Iowans gave DeSantis a largely positive reception, with a glowing introduction from the state’s governor.
“Politicians, we tend to talk a lot. But only a few actually get things done,” Kim Reynolds said of DeSantis. “Only a few have the resolve and the willingness to stand strong for us, and that’s who Ron is at his core.”
DeSantis took dead aim the debt deal and spending plan reached by Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., that he said had the country “careening toward bankruptcy” because of a lack of leadership.
“We now see Washington has now cooked up their latest ‘debt deal.’ And I can tell you this, our nation was careening towards bankruptcy before the debt deal, and it will still be careening towards bankruptcy after this debt deal,” DeSantis said.
“This is green-lighting $4 trillion in new debt in less than two years. It took us almost 200 years to get to $4 trillion in debt in the first place. It locks in inflated COVID-era levels of spending. And it keeps 98% of the 87,000 new IRS agents that Joe Biden instituted.”
DeSantis also took a swing at Biden’s open borders policy and the horrific toll it has taken on the nation.
“Millions of illegal aliens have poured into this country including criminal aliens, and even individuals on the terrorist watch list,” he said. “The massive amounts of fentanyl that the cartels are bringing in have killed tens of thousands of our fellow Americans.”
DeSantis’s delivery drew solid marks from Fox News host Jesse Water, who wrote that the governor “would rip the stitches off Joe Biden in a general and the media’s already insisting he’s more ‘dangerous’ than Trump.”
DeSantis never directly mentioned Trump during his Iowa speech, but took several veiled swipes, including a declaration that, “At the end of the day, leadership is not about entertainment, it’s not about building a brand, it’s not about virtue signaling. It is about results.” He also rapped Trump for nixing a prior visit to Iowa, an instance when DeSantis visited the state.
DESANTIS:
Before we left Iowa last time, the weather was so nice, we had to make one more stop in Des Moines. 😂— Marcel Teloma (@marcelteloma) May 30, 2023
"If you are faced with a destructive bureaucrat in your midst like a Fauci, you do not empower somebody like Fauci. You bring him into the office and you tell him to pack his bags: You are fired!" – @RonDeSantis pic.twitter.com/G2G2wKSu54
— Never Back Down (@NvrBackDown24) May 31, 2023
DeSantis was reportedly more direct in punching back against Trump after the speech.
“When we disagreed, I never bashed him publicly because he was taking all this incoming from the media, the left, and even some Republicans,” DeSantis said of Trump’s tenure in the White House.
“So, I never really would air those disagreements,” he told reporters. “Well, now he’s attacking me over some of these disagreements, but I think he’s doing it in a way that the voters are going to side with me.”
Trump got in his retaliatory rhetoric early, releasing a statement that ripped DeSantis as “A Failure For Iowa and Farmers,” and a “creature of the swamp.”
With Trump out of office and lobbing attacks, DeSantis said, “I’m going to fight back,” and did so by smacking down Trump’s criticism of Florida’s pandemic response, CNN reported.
“Hell, his whole family moved to Florida under my governorship,” DeSantis said of Trump. “Are you kidding me?”
The Florida governor said voters were ready to move on from what he has called the GOP’s electoral misfires, including a red wave midterm that Trump had promised but never materialized.
“I think our voters are looking at this and they say, yeah we appreciate what he did, but we also recognize there are a lot of voters that just aren’t gonna ever vote for him,” DeSantis told reporters.
“I know people in Florida who voted against me in ’18 and for me in ‘22. They said in ‘18, ‘I thought you were too much like him and in ‘22 we realized you were your own guy, we’re gonna do it.’”
While Chick-fil-A, the Dodgers, Blue Jays, Target, Bud Light, etc go woke for DEI, DeSantis is campaigning in Iowa on banning it.
If DeSantis wins, he will be going up against most of corporate America.
That's a huge battle to win. https://t.co/Me5O1UeuzY
— Ann Kelly (@AnnYeahAnn) May 31, 2023
