Fresh off a bungled campaign launch, newly minted 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is making the media rounds — and throwing jabs at Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

During a Thursday interview with Glenn Beck, DeSantis accused Trump of having “destroyed millions of people’s lives” during the Covid-19 pandemic by “turning the country over to Fauci.”

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DeSantis did not acknowledge the more-than 1.1 million American who have actually died from Covid, a number that would have undoubtedly been far greater if preventative measures weren’t put into place. Despite DeSantis’ claims that Florida’s anti-lockdown policies were successful in combating Covid, the state still experienced high Covid mortality rates compared to the rest of the nation.

DeSantis is needling Trump a day after the former president relentlessly mocked his campaign launch on Twitter Spaces being ruined by a myriad of technical issues. “Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER!,” the former president wrote on Truth Social. “His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!”

Trump also released an attack ad knocking Ron DeSantis as an off-brand imitator of his own style and policies. The Florida governor isn’t doing much to dispel the notion. In a separate appearance Thursday, on “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show,” DeSantis said he would consider pardoning Jan. 6 defendants.

DeSantis told the hosts that he would “use the pardon power” to clear the records of Jan. 6 defendants he feels were unfairly prosecuted by the federal government. “On day one,” DeSantis said, “I will have folks that will get together and look at all these cases [of] people are victims of weaponization or political targeting and we will be aggressive in issuing pardons.”

“It will be done on a case-by-case basis,” DeSantis added.

When asked if that promise would extend to Trump the candidate said that “any example of disfavored treatment based on politics or weaponization would be included in that review, no matter how small or how big.”

Trump may indeed need a pardon. The former president is already facing criminal charges in New York related to his 2016 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, Trump’s lawyers are already prepping the former president for a second indictment on federal charges related to a probe into the Mar-a-Lago classified documents scandal.

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