Technical issues that delayed DeSantis’ presidential campaign announcement have taken over the media while the content of his Twitter discussion has been buried. Here are five significant quotes that show where he stands on some of 2024’s hottest issues.
DeSantis opened his Twitter Spaces event with a prepared announcement formally marking the beginning of his 2024 presidential campaign.
“I am running for President of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” he began. “Look, we know our country is going in the wrong direction, we see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones.”
During the rest of the Twitter Spaces, DeSantis began to address how he intends to turn the country around. Here are the five most relevant quotes to issues he will likely focus on as he beings campaigning across the nation.
Quote #1: On the Current State of the Country
“The federal government is making it harder for the average family to make end meet and to obtain and maintain a middle class lifestyle, and our president, well, he lacks vigor, flounders in the face of our nation’s challenges, and he takes his cues from the woke mob. I don’t think it has to be this way. American decline is not inevitable, it is a choice, and we should choose a new direction.”
Quote #2. On Race and Travel Advisories Against Florida
“Our view is we want everybody to succeed regardless of their skin color, we don’t divvy up people by race. At the same time, it is worth pointing out that we have, in Florida, more black-owned businesses than any state in the nation, and we’ve also had more African-Americans lead state agencies under my administration than at any time in Florida history. But with us, you know they’re there because of merit, not because we’re trying to play identity politics.”
“And by the way, the head of the NAACP lives in Florida…”
Quote #3. On Federal Government Failures During COVID
“Their impulses were authoritarian, they were not following the data, and I think the US government needs to acknowledge the failures, and I think all of those agencies need to be cleaned out.”
“What I saw, just dealing with them, was I saw an interest in the narrative, and in politics, over evidence based reasoning and evidence based medicine. So I don’t have confidence that those agencies are up to the task, and I think you need major, major overhaul of the whole enchilada with respect to public health in this country.”
Quote #4. On Education and Affirmative Action
“When we’re taking on things like DEI, you get blowback from legacy media and the far left, but that’s an example of an issue that they are out of step with the vast majority of Americans.”
“If you’re a parent and you’ve got kids, you want to know when they apply to college they’re going to be judged based on their merit, and they’re not gonna be roadkill in some type of woke Olympics where they didn’t fit some category and so they’re denied opportunity. They want to make sure that achievement matters.”
Quote #5. On Defunding Federal Agencies
“All I can say when it comes to these agencies – we’ll go into this a little bit more as the campaign goes on – but buckle up when I get in there, because the status quo is not acceptable and we are going to make sure that we constitutionalize this government. These agencies are totally out of control, there’s no accountability, and we are going to bring that in a very big way.”
“If an agency is engaging in conduct that is outside the realm of what is legal, or you think it’s not good for the public interest, then you can remove the funding for those operations. They’re not entitled to get the same level of funding every year, yet Congress runs the government on autopilot.”
