DeSantis lambastes Trump, declaring his presidential rival is ‘full of it’

Gov. Ron DeSantis went after former President Donald Trump on Thursday, charging that his rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination has revealed himself “to be full of it” and “saying things that are false.”

And, he said, recent Trump comments are “frivolous” and people wouldn’t find them “credible.”

DeSantis was attempting to refute criticism over the way he led Florida during the pandemic phase of COVID-19. Trump has said that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo did a better job leading his state than DeSantis did in Florida.

Criticism of DeSantis’ handling of COVID has been a running theme for Trump, as he has sought to chip away at the political brand DeSantis has built among many Republican voters as a visionary leader during the worst of the pandemic. Much of the back and forth has taken place on Fox, a favorite source of information for many Republican voters.

And it comes with the backdrop of Trump’s continued rise in public opinion polls of Republican primary voters — even after the federal indictment charging him with multiple counts of mishandling classified documents.

An Emerson College national poll released Thursday showed Trump with the support of 59% of Republican primary voters, down 3 percentage points since April. DeSantis is in a distant second place with the support of 21%, up 5 percentage points from April. The polling indicates DeSantis got a slight bump from the formal announcement of his presidential candidacy last month.

DeSantis was asked about Trump at a campaign-style event in Tampa. He didn’t answer a question about whether he’d endorse Trump if he ultimately becomes the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.

The pro-Trump super political action committee Make America Great Again quickly blasted DeSantis avoiding the question. “DeSantis is showing his true colors with this response. He is not an America First conservative, and he is out of touch with Republican voters.”

DeSantis went off on Trump’s comparing him unfavorably to Cuomo, delivering an answer that lasted more than two minutes.

“When you are saying that Cuomo did better on COVID than Florida did, you are revealing yourself to just be full of it,” DeSantis said.

“Nobody believes that. And you know why? And you know why I know that? Because I remember in 2020 and 2021 when he was praising Florida for being open, saying we did it much better than New York and Michigan, and everyone was coming to Florida and that we were one of the great governors in the United States and he used to say that all the time,” DeSantis said.

“Now all the sudden his tune is changing, and I would just tell people do you find it credible? Do you honestly find it credible?” the governor said.

Both men’s assessments have evolved. Trump used to praise DeSantis, and DeSantis — who was propelled into the governorship in 2018 by strong support of Trump — used to praise the former president.

After initially ordering shutdowns in COVID, DeSantis became a proponent of earlier openings than in many other states. And after initially promoting coronavirus vaccines, he has become a vaccine skeptic as many voters in the Republican Party base rejected vaccination.

The numbers show the answer isn’t clear. The New York Times, which tracked COVID data for much of the pandemic, found Florida had 87,000 total deaths from the beginning of the pandemic until March 2023, a higher number than New York, the early epicenter of coronavirus in the U.S., which had a total of about 80,000 deaths. Florida has a higher population so its death rate was slightly lower.

DeSantis sought to turn Trump’s latest criticisms into an advantage.

“Would you have rather been in New York during COVID under the Cuomo regime or would you rather have been in the free state of Florida? And I probably can count the number of Republicans on my hand in the nation who would have rather been under Cuomo in New York and we know that,” DeSantis said.

“And so these are just frivolous criticisms, but in some respects, I think it shows that you know, if you have to make that argument that you probably don’t have very good arguments because the reality is everything he said about us for years about how strong we were, how good we were, how we delivered for the state, those happen to be true, and now he’s trying to backtrack because he, you know, feels he needs to do that and he’s saying things that are false,” DeSantis said.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com, on Twitter @browardpolitics and on Post.news/@browardpolitics