DeSantis brushes off Trump’s COVID-19 dig, touts GOP midterm surge in Florida
Ryan King
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) shrugged off an attack from former President Donald Trump at a campaign event and steered clear of returning direct fire Tuesday.
Trump criticized DeSantis over the weekend for imposing a stay-at-home order during the height of the pandemic. DeSantis downplayed the broadside, noting that he faces criticisms from “all angles” on a constant basis and pointed to the strong GOP midterm showing in the Sunshine State as evidence that voters approve of his performance.
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“I roll out of bed, I have people attacking me from all angles. It’s been happening for many, many years,” DeSantis explained during a press conference. “If you take a crisis situation like COVID, the good thing about it is when you’re an elected executive, you have to make all kinds of decisions. You gotta steer that ship. And the good thing is that the people are able to render a judgment on that whether they reelect you or not.”
“I’m happy to say, you know, in my case, not only did we win reelection, we won with the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican governor candidate has in the history of the state of Florida,” DeSantis added.
https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/1620451264499949568
COVID-19 helped catapult DeSantis into political stardom among corners of the conservative base for his railing against mask mandates and lockdown orders. He is now polling as Trump’s top GOP primary rival in 2024, though he has yet to announce whether he will run. Over the weekend, Trump chided DeSantis for implementing a stay-at-home order around April 2020 during the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“There are Republican governors that did not close their states; Florida was closed for a long period of time,” Trump said Saturday. “They’re trying to rewrite history.”
DeSantis issued the executive order after a phone call with Trump about the pandemic amid White House projections of mass deaths if the respiratory illness wasn’t contained. Trump has traded barbs with DeSantis over the COVID-19 vaccine in the past, ripping him for being coy about whether he received the booster.
Last year, Trump unleashed a fiery screed against DeSantis, arguing he was not a strong candidate to be the party’s standard-bearer in 2024. In the face of such attacks, DeSantis has frequently sought to deescalate or avert tit-for-tats with Trump.
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Whispers of consternation about Trump grew louder in the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections as some prominent Republicans questioned whether Trump’s baggage imperiled the party nationally. Florida served as a bright spot for the GOP, which swept the increasingly red swing state. DeSantis trounced his Democratic foe Charlie Crist by almost 20 percentage points.
The stay-at-home order under DeSantis lasted about a month and featured exceptions for worship services, outdoor recreational activities, and “essential activities.”
Trump held his first major campaign trail events of the year over the weekend.