Republican Florida Governor DeSantis on Tuesday hit back at former President Donald Trump’s criticism, saying that unlike the former president’s 2020 bid he has been re-elected by voters.
DeSantis said Tuesday at an event on the history of education in response to a question about Trump’s recent attacks.
Laird replied, “The good thing is that people are able to make a judgment on that: whether they re-elect you or not.” “I am pleased to say that in my case, not only did we win re-election, but we won the highest percentage of the vote any Republican gubernatorial candidate in Florida history has received,” DeSantis said. “What I would say is that this ruling was made by the people of the state of Florida,” he added.
“He’s used to constant attacks from political rivals,” said DeSantis, who is widely believed to be considering a presidential bid in 2024.
His comments come days after Trump, who has already launched his 2024 re-election bid, attacked the Florida governor during his campaign events on Saturday. In interviews with reporters on his plane this week in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Trump blasted DeSantis as “insincere” and accused him of changing his views on coronavirus vaccines.
“Florida has actually been locked down for a very long time: ‘Remember they closed the beaches and everything else,'” Trump said. “You know what? They’re trying to rewrite history.”
And during a roundtable with Covid vaccine skeptics last month, DeSantis called on the state Supreme Court to urge a grand jury to investigate whether drug companies criminally misled Floridians about the side effects of their vaccines.
DeSantis, once a staunch advocate of vaccines, later backtracked. By January, he refused to say whether he had been given a booster shot.
In a series of recent polls, Trump has led DeSantis by 19 points or more. But there are signs that support for Trump has waned in parts of the country, and a University of New Hampshire poll released this week showed DeSantis leading Trump, 42 percent to 30 percent. New Hampshire traditionally holds the first primary in the country, after the Iowa caucuses.