DeSantis attacks Trump for not ‘draining the swamp’ and calls his insults ‘juvenile’
Eden Villalovas
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) laid into former President Donald Trump Friday, calling his insults “phony” and “juvenile” while attacking his presidential record.
“He’s running in 2024 on the things that he promised to do in 2016 and didn’t do,” DeSantis said on WMUR 9 News’s Conversation with the Candidate, where he addressed questions from New Hampshire voters. “He said he was going to drain the swamp. He did not drain the swamp. Not even close.”
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DeSantis emphasized Trump’s failure to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has long faced a slew of criticism from Republicans and the former president himself for his role as an adviser to the administration on the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We ended his presidency with Anthony Fauci running the country,” DeSantis said. “He couldn’t even fire Fauci? And so now you’re going to drain the swamp? Give me a break.”
Trump and DeSantis are leading rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but they previously supported one another. However, Trump has denied ever liking the Florida governor. DeSantis acknowledged that he once supported Trump and appreciates many of his accomplishments, but he condemned the former president’s behavior.
“I’m not going to insult somebody’s looks or somebody’s dress or something like that,” DeSantis said. “I wouldn’t teach my kids to treat people like that.”
Trump has been escalating his rebukes of DeSantis as the election cycle advances. DeSantis had been holding back until a few months ago when he denounced the former president’s record for adding trillions to the national debt.
“And then he actually said he was going to eliminate the national debt,” DeSantis reiterated Friday. “He added $8 trillion to the debt.”
The total gross debt in the nation was around $19.5 trillion at the end of fiscal 2016, ending several months before Trump entered the White House. The U.S. debt sat at $26.9 trillion at the end of fiscal 2020, a $7.4 trillion increase before when Trump left office, according to the Associated Press.
DeSantis avoided making any remarks about Trump’s various legal battles following the former president’s arraignment in Washington, D.C., on Thursday on 2020 election charges.
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While Trump leads in the national polls, he’s faring worse in New Hampshire than other early voting swing states. Trump has 34%, and 13% support DeSantis, according to a poll conducted in July by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
“There are millions of voters out there who do not like what Biden is doing to this country,” DeSantis said. “They do not like the direction this country is going in. But they are not going to sign up for a candidate who is behaving like that.”