{"id":1904596,"date":"2023-03-24T19:25:22","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T23:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/desantis-says-he-hasnt-made-a-final-decision-on-2024-presidential-run\/"},"modified":"2023-03-24T19:32:56","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T23:32:56","slug":"desantis-says-he-hasnt-made-a-final-decision-on-2024-presidential-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/desantis-says-he-hasnt-made-a-final-decision-on-2024-presidential-run\/","title":{"rendered":"DeSantis Says He Hasn\u2019t \u2018Made a Final Decision\u2019 on 2024 Presidential Run"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdesantis-says-he-hasnt-made-a-final-decision-on-2024-presidential-run%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1904596&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"post_content\">\n<div class=\"aplayer_app\" data-source=\"https:\/\/vs1.youmaker.com\/assets\/2023\/0324\/d89ea850-ee97-4cfa-8150-d2d02b396df5\/audio.mp3?length=11568141&#038;duration=964\"><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>If he was President of the United States, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would loosen regulatory spigots on domestic oil\/gas production to diminish Putin\u2019s Russia, defend Taiwan if attacked by the People\u2019s Republic of China, ban TikTok, and nationalize a governing formula that has made the Sunshine State \u201cone of the most dynamic jurisdictions in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During an hour-long March 23 interview with Piers Morgan on Fox Nation in the Governor\u2019s Mansion in Tallahassee, DeSantis answered questions about his childhood in Dunedin, Florida, loss of a sister at age 30 to a pulmonary embolism, and about his wife, Casey\u2019s, successful battle against breast cancer.<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis and Morgan traced his experiences as a Yale and Harvard student, as a U.S. Navy attorney in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, his two terms in Congress, and his challenges and triumphs as a swing state governor who narrowly won his first term in 2018 before being reelected by more than 1.5 million votes in November 2022 in a state that, under his leadership, had turned bright red.<\/p>\n<p>About 50 minutes into the interview, Morgan finally popped \u201cthe question you are not going to answer\u201d which is\u2014and has been for months\u2014Is he running for president?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have not made a final decision on it,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cI\u2019ve told people I got a lot to do here in Florida over the next few months. We\u2019re going to put a lot of points on the board, and then we\u2019ll see how the dust settles after that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut,\u201d he continued, \u201cI will tell you we have a lot of people that realize the country is not going in the right direction and believe that what we\u2019ve been able to do in Florida, if we could apply that nationally, would kind of get America back on track and back to our foundations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, I take that very seriously. It\u2019s humbling that people have come to me and asked me to do it, or urge me to do it. So, stay tuned.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That sounds like a \u201cyes,\u201d Morgan said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a stay tuned,\u201d said DeSantis.<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis, regarded the undeclared top challenger to Donald Trump\u2019s bid for a third consecutive Republican nomination to run for president in 2024, is not overtly running for president. No one expects him to formally declare until after the Florida Legislature adjourns in May\u2014despite clear signs to the contrary. He recently concluded a book tour to early primary states Iowa and Nevada and has April book tour visits planned to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, and New Hampshire.<\/p>\n<p>Despite all this, DeSantis said it\u2019s not a slam dunk that he will run in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook, I got a young family and I got different obligations and it\u2019s not the easiest thing in the world to go through and I also want to make sure that I have a very clear rationale for doing what I am doing,\u201d he said, then making a very campaign-like jab by inference at Trump\u2019s centrifugal and loud omnipresence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll I am interested in doing is getting things done and accomplishing things,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cI don\u2019t need a title. I don\u2019t need fanfare. I just want to know that if I put my mind to this, if we were ever did that and we were successful, what could I do to make a difference?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said he\u2019s ready to do just that if runs and is in the White House in January 2025.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat it takes is to have a vision for the country, the ability to exercise leadership, and being willing to stand in that fire when it gets really, really hot, and not back down under pressure,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cI think I have all those things.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3841674\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><\/noscript> Dr. Anthony Fauci (L) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). ((Greg Nash\/Pool via Reuters; Samira Bouaou\/The Epoch Times)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Would Have \u2018Fired\u2019 Fauci<\/h2>\n<p>Morgan began the interview with a confession, recalling he said in 2021 that DeSantis would have \u201cblood on his hands\u201d for refusing to follow federal guidance on shutting down businesses and closing schools during the 2020-21 COVID pandemic that led to high-profile battles with local governments, school boards, and the Biden administration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI criticized you in a 2021 tweet when it looked like Florida\u2019s record on COVID was not going to be good,\u201d Morgan said, calling DeSantis \u201cone of the first people in America, certainly, who gave people back their freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course, \u201cit didn\u2019t turn out that way,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cActually you were very bold in the things that you were doing, more than any other governor. And it turns out you were vindicated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It turned out that way, DeSantis acknowledged, but he wasn\u2019t always so certain about the right things to do during the winter and spring of 2020.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was very concerned about COVID,\u201d he said, noting that as a haven for retirees, Florida has a significant elderly population with more than 4,000 nursing homes. \u201cSo this was a huge existential threat to Florida. We took it very seriously. I also said, \u2018We\u2019re going to follow the data.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis denied he is an \u201canti-vaxxer\u201d and at first, was eager to encourage people to get vaccinated because \u201cwe thought the vax would end COVID during the Delta wave.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But data showed it was not true\u2014people being vaccinated could still spread the disease.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI said, \u2018okay, the vax isn\u2019t stopping the spread; we need treatments\u201d such as antibodies and other alternatives to the vaccinations.<\/p>\n<p>In the face of federal vaccine mandates, there was also a growing sense of outrage. \u201cYou also have to trust people to make a decision. This idea that we are going to use coercion. I just don\u2019t think that is sustainable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis said he would have handled the pandemic differently than Trump did. For one thing, he said, he would not have allowed former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci to dictate national policy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would have fired somebody like Fauci. I think he got way too big for his britches, and I think he did a lot of damage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4164176\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><\/noscript> Florida Governor-elect Ron DeSantis (R) sits next to President Donald Trump during a meeting with Governors-elect in the Cabinet Room at the White House on Dec. 13, 2018. (Mark Wilson\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Tangling With Trump<\/h2>\n<p>The comment was among many sprinkled throughout the interview referencing the elephant-in-the-room former president.<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis said in comparing himself with the bombastic Trump, that \u201cthere\u2019s a few things\u201d where differences are clear.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust in terms of my approach to leadership,\u201d he said, \u201cI get personnel in the government who have the agenda of the people and share our agenda. If you bring your own agenda in, you\u2019re gone. We\u2019re not going to have that. So, the way we run the government, I think, is no daily drama, focus on the big picture, and put points on the board.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While Trump sucks the air out of room, DeSantis said he oxygenates it without much flash or drama.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t do the cocktail parties,\u201d he said, although he said he and Casey enjoy an occasional celebratory Guinness. \u201cI just do my job and go home to spend time with my family. I do think that I deal better with regular people than some of the people in the political class.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis said he had \u201ca good relationship\u201d with Trump while in Congress in 2016 and his first two years as governor after his 2018 election, which was propelled by the president\u2019s effusive endorsement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI saw this Russia collusion thing as a farce from the beginning. Very few people said that. We had a handful of us in Congress that were fighting back against that so I would go on TV and defend him when it wasn\u2019t popular and when it was politically risky, but I just thought it was the right thing to do and I thought he had good ideas for the country,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cWhen I was governor \u2026 we worked very well together. I mean he was not a Florida resident yet, he had a place in Florida, he understood Florida, and really worked well with us to serve our state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But while many of Trump\u2019s midterm endorsements were defeated and the GOP fell short of its self-ballyhooed \u201cred wave,\u201d DeSantis led a resounding Republican tsunami in Florida, spearheaded by his own overwhelming reelection.<\/p>\n<p>The governor\u2019s midterm success and Florida\u2019s economic performance put him at the top of the list of 2024 Republican presidential candidates alongside Trump.<\/p>\n<p>The attention and accolades did not sit well with the former president. He began calling his potential rival \u201cMeatball Ron\u201d and \u201cRon DeSanctimonious\u201d at rallies and on his TruthSocial page.<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis told Morgan that Floridians don\u2019t understand what Trump means with the nickname, aren\u2019t sure if it\u2019s an insult, and that it has \u201ca lot of vowels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know how to spell the sanctimonious one. I don\u2019t really know what it means, but I kind of like it. It\u2019s long; it\u2019s got a lot of vowels. We\u2019ll go with that, that\u2019s fine,\u201d he tells Morgan. \u201cI mean, you can call me whatever you want, just as long as you also call me a winner, because that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been able to do in Florida, is put a lot of points on the board and really take this state to the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With Trump embroiled in four criminal investigations and now on \u201cindictment watch\u201d with a 23-member grand jury in Manhattan expected to hand down an indictment next week for his alleged $130,000 \u201chush money\u201d payoff in 2016 to adult entertainment actress Stormy Daniels, DeSantis has been circumspect in his comments about the former president\u2019s scandals, saying twice during a March 20 press conference in Tallahassee that he doesn\u2019t have any experience in how to deal with \u201cpaying off porn stars.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There is \u201ca lot of speculation about the underlying conduct that is purported to be it,\u201d he told Morgan. \u201cThe reality is, that\u2019s just outside my wheelhouse. I hope it doesn\u2019t come to this moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He has, however, criticized New York County DA Alvin Bragg for pursing a seven-year-old case his predecessor and federal prosecutors opted to shelve.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you\u2019re a very strident prosecutor\u2014and this guy is on the left\u2014and you are not prosecuting a lot of crimes in Manhattan, you\u2019re going to go after somebody on other side for some \u2018novel \u2018offense?\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cThat just does not inspire confidence and people see that as weaponizing the justice system. So I think it is fundamentally wrong to do. Who knows? Maybe we won\u2019t see anything come from that, We haven\u2019t seen anything firm yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Morgan quoted a warning from a fellow doctor to Dr. Frankenstein in Mary Shelley\u2019s \u2018Frankenstein\u2019 that, \u201cYou have created a monster and it will destroy you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you\u2019re alluding to what?\u201d DeSantis laughed.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4323550\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><\/noscript> The U.S. flag decorates the side of a guard tower inside of Joint Task Force Guantanamo Camp VI at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in March 2016. (Lucas Jackson\/Reuters)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Shaped by 9\/11, Iraq, Gitmo<\/h2>\n<p>DeSantis had graduated from Yale and been accepted at Harvard law school when \u201cthe world changed\u201d on 9\/11.<\/p>\n<p>Through the 1990s, \u201cour country didn\u2019t have a care in the world. The Cold War was over. There was prosperity. When the towers fell, it changed my outlook,\u201d he said, telling himself \u201cI should be willing to do something. \u201cThat is when I decided to start looking into other career choices.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He joined the Navy. \u201cWhen you wear the cloth of your country, that is meaningful service.\u201d he said. As a JAG attorney, he worked with Seal Team 1 in Fallujah, Iraq, and at Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba.<\/p>\n<p>His time at \u201cGitmo\u201d is certain to be a campaign issue. He denies ordering detainees to be force-fed. \u201cI was a junior officer. I didn\u2019t have authority to authorize anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis said there should have been \u201cmilitary commissions\u201d to try those thought to be terrorists rather than allowing them to languish on the isolated base in Cuba.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe thing was, if we release this person back to Afghanistan, are they going to engage in terrorism? That\u2019s hard to know definitively, so I think they tended to err on the side of caution,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a tough thing when you have a situation with terrorism and war because they are not a nation-state and you cannot try them in a civilian court. So, you really need military commissions but that kind of sputtered out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis said invading Afghanistan and taking down the Taliban was the right thing to do. \u201cI would have left earlier than when we did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The only beneficiary of invading Iraq was Iran, he said. \u201cWe now we have a situation where Iraq is basically a satellite of Iran, our most significant adversary certainly in the region. In hindsight, I think Iran has gotten stronger as a result of that conflict,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5111231\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><\/noscript> Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019s book \u201cThe Courage to Be Free: Florida\u2019s Blueprint for America\u2019s Revival,\u201d is displayed on a store shelf on Feb. 28, 2023 in Titusville, Fla. (Photo by Joe Raedle\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Ukraine Clarity<\/h2>\n<p>Earlier in March, DeSantis told Tucker Carlson on his Fox News show that the Ukraine-Russia war was a \u201cterritorial dispute\u201d of little strategic value to the United States.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s been severely criticized since, including by many prominent Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think [the comment] has been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded Ukraine, and that was wrong,\u201d DeSantis said, noting that Russia\u2019s seizure of Crimea in 2014 was also wrong.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe idea that I thought Russia was justified, that\u2019s nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The border regions and Crimea are \u201ca messy situation\u201d with many ethnic Russians living there, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I was referring to is where the fighting is going on, that eastern border region, Donbas, that\u2019s the source of the conflict\u201d which \u201cis likely to continue going forward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think there\u2019s likely to be a stalemate for a quite some time,\u201d DeSantis continued, \u201cand unfortunately, a lot of people are going to end up dying if that\u2019s the case. If I could snap my fingers, I\u2019d give it back to Ukraine 100 percent. But the reality is, what is America\u2019s involvement in terms of escalating with weapons? Ground troops would be a mistake. So, that was the point I was trying to make. Russia was wrong to invade and wrong in Crimea.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The invasion has exposed Russia\u2019s military as less formidable than feared in regard to conventional war-fighting capabilities and Russian President Vladimir Putin as a self-aggrandizing tyrant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe larger point is, okay, Russia has not shown the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government, to threaten NATO,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cThat\u2019s a good thing, They have been weakened.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Putin, however, is a threat to the west and the United States, he said, and must be contained. \u201cI think he has grand ambitions and is hostile to the United States but, I think, what we\u2019ve seen is, he doesn\u2019t have the conventional capability to realize his ambitions. So, he\u2019s basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The best way to cuff him? \u201cFor us, among the things that we could be doing better is utilizing our own energy resources\u201d and opening the throttle on oil and gas production to export to Europe and elsewhere around the globe.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOil and gas exports is :where he gets all his power and obviously, he\u2019s influenced Europe. So, the way to hit Putin is with energy,\u201d DeSantis said, calling Putin \u201ca war criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>China, not Putin\u2019s Russia, is the nation\u2019s biggest threat, he said, adding that the United States should defend Taiwan if China invades.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat would be aggression,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbsolutely. I would say that Taiwan in a strong ally to the U.S.\u201d and defending it would be in the nation\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If he was President of the United States, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would loosen regulatory spigots on domestic oil\/gas production to diminish Putin\u2019s Russia, defend Taiwan if attacked by the People\u2019s Republic of China, ban TikTok, and nationalize a governing formula that has made the Sunshine State \u201cone of the most dynamic jurisdictions in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":509,"featured_media":1904597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[543],"tags":[4506,4552,4980,8762,9508,4264,3849],"class_list":["post-1904596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-epoch-times","tag-4506","tag-decision","tag-desantis","tag-final","tag-hasnt","tag-made","tag-presidential"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1904596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1904597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1904596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1904596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1904596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}