Former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) were quick to attack each other yesterday during their first concurrent campaign appearances since DeSantis declared his candidacy for president on May 24. Trump visited Iowa while DeSantis campaigned in New Hampshire, but both attempted to frame themselves as the better GOP candidate.
“When we’re finished, we’ll take a couple of questions,” Trump emphasized to his audience. “A lot of politicians don’t take questions. They give a speech.”
Trump’s comments — and subsequent 20 minutes of fielded questions — came shortly after DeSantis’s appearance in Iowa earlier that week, where he lashed out against an Associated Press reporter who asked him why he wasn’t taking questions from voters on stage.
“People are coming up to me, talking to me. What are you talking about? Are you blind?” the Florida governor told the reporter.
Trump also responded to DeSantis’ claim that it would take two presidential terms to reverse the actions of the Biden administration and implement a conservative agenda — a reference to the fact that Trump can only serve one more term.
“You don’t need eight years. You need six months,” Trump said at his event in Urbandale, Iowa. “Who the hell wants to wait eight years?” The former president told voters that undoing the Biden administration’s actions only requires three easy policy shifts: “drilling,” “the wall” and “getting criminals out of [the] country.”
In response to Trump’s claims, DeSantis asked, “Why didn’t he do it his first four years?”
The ongoing rivalry between the two candidates doesn’t seem to be letting up with Trump indicating that he would continue his attacks against DeSantis until the Florida governor is no longer a competitive GOP candidate, and with DeSantis saying he’s going to “counterpunch” and “fight back” on all attacks.
