Gov. Ron DeSantis gently criticized Donald Trump Friday — although not by name — for skipping next week’s scheduled GOP presidential primary debate.
DeSantis commented a few hours before Trump, after weeks of playing coy, announced he would not appear next Wednesday in Milwaukee, potentially leaving DeSantis the only presidential candidate from Florida on the debate stage.
(Miami Mayor Francis Suarez claimed Friday that he met the threshold to be at the debate, although senior advisers to the Republican National Committee told the Associated Press that he had not met the criteria.)
Conservative broadcaster Erick Erickson asked the governor about the matter during an interview as part of Erickson’s “Gathering” event in Atlanta, which featured chats with DeSantis and some of the other Republican candidates.
The event transpired the day after The New York Times reported that a debate strategy memo from the DeSantis-aligned Never Back Down PAC advised the governor to “defend Donald Trump” against any attacks by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another GOP presidential candidate. Trump, now facing four indictments in state and federal courts, leads with 54.1% in the latest FiveThirtyEight national poll average, with DeSantis in second place with 15.7% and the rest in single digits.
“We’re prepared either way,” DeSantis told Erickson about a Trump appearance.
“You know, it is what it is and I think everyone should debate that qualifies. I think you owe it to the people to put out your vision, to talk about your record, answer questions about your record and decisions that you may have made or not made. And, if you’re not willing to do that, then I think people are not going to look kindly on that,” he said.
“But we’re, I’m excited about doing it, because most of what you do in this process is filtered through media. It’s seldom you get the opportunity to speak directly to this many people. I mean, there’ll probably be 10 million, who knows, maybe even more. So, it gives you an opportunity to deliver your message and then to answer questions that are appropriate,” the governor continued.
‘Focused on the future’
“I hope that we will be focused on the future of the country rather than some of the other static that’s out there right now,” he said.
“Because some of the static, a lot of the things about looking backwards, that is not going to help us secure the border; that is not going to help these middle-class families who are struggling even to afford groceries, it’s not going to help them get better; it’s not going to help us be able to rake in these federal agencies that have abused their power; it’s not going to help with any of that,” DeSantis continued.
“There’s nobody that wants us to look backward more than Democrats and the media. They would love to have us have to relitigate all this stuff from 2020, 2021, because what does that do? That let’s Biden sit in his basement again, not have to answer questions or face scrutiny.”
During the discussion before a friendly audience, Erickson and DeSantis sat in large, comfy-looking arm chairs, with the governor sometimes leaning forward toward his interviewer, sometimes lazing back in his chair.
DeSantis hit on a few of his familiar themes, including the need to “unleash” domestic energy sources, namely fossil fuels; what he sees as an unbridled “administrative state;” an overweening federal public health apparatus; and a national economic policy he sees as too dependent on China.
AI ‘peril’
He expressed concern over the advent of artificial intelligence, which uses existing data and written archives to solve problems in an array of disciplines, warning that the main corporate players in that field rely on “kinda a woke data set” that can skew results.
“There’s a lot of peril with something like artificial intelligence. I don’t think we can just put our heads in the sand and not deal with it, because China’s going to be using it from a defense perspective, and if they’re able to go and we’re not keeping up with them, that’s going to put our country at a competitive disadvantage,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis also indulged in MAGA grievance, complaining that the news media aren’t exorcised enough about Hunter Biden’s laptop (which GOP-led congressional panels hope to use to tie President Biden to corruption, without evidence thus far) and the president’s response to the Maui fire (a news clip hosted mostly by conservative media appears to show Biden saying “no comment” about that topic).
“Now look, if a Republican had tried to do that, what do you think the media would do? They would go crazy. As a fact, they would blame the Republican for the fires happening in the first place. We all know that that’s the truth,” DeSantis said.
Military’s ‘proper function’
The U.S. Navy veteran blamed a shortfall in military recruitment on in part on mandatory COVID vaccinations but more so on the Pentagon’s pursuit of “social experimentation, political agenda, woke ideology at the expense of the mission.”
“That’s not necessarily a military that people are going to be inspired to join at the levels we need,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to restore the military to its proper function of putting the mission first.”
The Pentagon blames the recruitment situation on “a combination of a healthy private sector, a cumbersome medical processing system, a lack of interest in the military among today’s youth and a dwindling population of qualified young adults,” according to a Military Times report.
DeSantis did not mention the hold that Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville has placed on military promotions, which has left several of the armed services with vacancies at the top. Biden has called the situation “dangerous” to military readiness.
DeSantis did pledge to build up the United States’ “defense industrial base,” steering contracts to smaller companies rather than just “a handful of big placeholders or stakeholders.”
This article originally appeared in florida phoenix