Ron DeSantis Responds to Trump Criticizing His Loyalty By Boasting of His Landslide Election Win

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis responded to recent criticism from former President Donald Trump regarding his loyalty by boasting of his landslide election victory in November.

Speaking to reporters on his campaign plane Saturday (in footage aired on CNN), the former president went after DeSantis and former Gov. Nikki Haley in an apparent effort to keep them from jumping into the 2024 field. Haley has publicly announced an exploratory committee for 2024, while DeSantis kept his powder dry.

“Ron would have not been governor if it wasn’t for me,” Trump said of DeSantis — in an oft-repeated refrain. “When I hear that he might run, I consider that very disloyal.”

The Florida governor took questions during a press event touting “higher education reform” and was asked about recent criticism, notably from Trump, and refused to take the direct bait, instead focusing on the “780,000 vote margin” that led to his second term as Florida’s governor. DeSantis said:

I roll out of bed, I have people attacking me from all angles. It’s been happening for many, many years. And if you look at the good thing about it, though, is like if you take a crisis situation like COVID, you know, the good thing about it is when you’re an elected executive, you have to make all kinds of decisions. You got to steer that ship. And the good thing is, is that the people are able to render a judgment on that, whether they reelect you or not. And I’m happy to say, you know, in my case, not only did we win reelection, we won with the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican governor candidate has in the history of the state of Florida. We won by the largest raw vote margin over 1.5 million votes than any governor candidate has ever had in Florida history. And in fact, we almost doubled the previous record, which I think was like 780,000 vote margin. And so what I would just say is that verdict has been rendered by the people of the state of Florida.

DeSantis’ 2022 election victory was an outlying Republican success story in midterms where the much-predicted “red wave” failed to materialize.

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