Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had a simple response Tuesday to weekend attacks by former President Donald Trump: Check the electoral scoreboard.
After Trump accused the governor of disloyalty and mismanaging COVID, DeSantis argued that his gubernatorial blowout of Democrat Charlie Crist served as an inarguable endorsement of his Sunshine State reign.
“When you’re an elected executive, you have to make all kinds of decisions,” he said after being asked about Trump’s barbs at an unrelated press conference. “And the good thing is, the people are able to render a judgment on that, whether they re-elect you or not.”
DeSantis noted his historic margin of victory, suggesting that Trump’s critiques of his COVID policies were likely to fall on deaf ears.
“In my case, not only did we win re-election, we won with the highest percentage of the vote than any Republican governor candidate in the history of the state of Florida,” he said.
In attempting to diminish DeSantis — who has yet to formally announce a presidential run — the 76-year-old Trump has cast him as an ingrate who owes him his political career.
“He’s going to have to do what he wants to do, but he may run. I do think it would be a great act of disloyalty because, you know, I got him in,” the former president said at a weekend campaign event. “He had no chance. His political life was over.”
Trump also opened up a new and largely unexpected line of attack on his ascendant rival.
Accusing DeSantis, 44, of attempting to “rewrite” his management of the pandemic, Trump questioned the Florida governor for closing parts of the state in the early stages of the crisis.
The former commander-in-chief argued that other Republican governors refrained from doing so — and added that DeSantis was a vocal vaccine booster at one point.
Observers have questioned Trump’s tack, noting that DeSantis’ less stringent COVID policies helped to propel him to national prominence as the pandemic spiraled.
Along with Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladopo, DeSantis has made a point to offer vaccine skeptics a wider platform in recent months.
He hosted a roundtable discussion of vaccine-related concerns in December, and has stressed that Florida never considered jab mandates for employees.
Meanwhile, DeSantis announced Tuesday that he will seek to nix all funding for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) “bureaucracies” at state colleges and universities.
He argued that higher education has been commandeered by leftist ideologues whose primary goal is to squelch dissenting viewpoints in favor of their own.
“That’s not what we believe is appropriate in the state of Florida,” he said. “Instead we need our higher education to focus on promoting academic excellence, the pursuit of truth, and to give students the foundation to think for themselves.”
DeSantis asserted that colleges and universities were routing more and more funding to the entrenchment and expansion of DEI programs at the expense of classroom resources.
Proposed reforms include a ban on campus activities that promote DEI or critical race theory, outlawing DEI considerations in hiring, and a greater promotion of degrees that lead to high-wage jobs.
The initiative will also seek to give school presidents more power in reviewing tenured professors.
