Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declined to say at a Thursday press conference whether he would support former President Donald Trump in the general election if Trump wins the GOP nomination.
When Daily Caller chief national correspondent Henry Rodgers asked DeSantis whether he would support Trump at a Thursday press conference, the Florida governor responded by criticizing the former president for two minutes without directly answering Rodgers’ question.
“Former president Trump has continued to attack you and he did again last night, regardless of his attacks, will you 100 percent pledge to support Trump if he’s the GOP nominee?” Rodgers asked.
“What I would say is this. When you are saying that [former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo did better on COVID than Florida did, you are revealing yourself to just be full of it,” DeSantis began. “Nobody believes that. And you know why? And you know why I know that? Because I remember in 2020 and 2021, when he was praising Florida for being open, saying we did it much better than New York and Michigan, and everybody was coming to Florida and that we were one of the great governors in the United States, and he used to say that all the time.”
“Now all of a sudden his tune is changing, and I would just tell people, ‘Do you find it credible? Do you honestly find it credible?'” he continued.
The governor said Trump does not have “good arguments” against him, and accused Trump of trying to “backtrack” for the 2024 primary. (RELATED: ‘I Was Really Surprised’: DeSantis Hits Back At Trump’s ‘Harsh’ Abortion-Ban Comments)
“I don’t think people are gonna buy it. I don’t think it’s gonna ultimately matter in the end. I think we’re gonna be successful,” he said. “But, at the same time, we get into these processes. It’s like, I want to beat Biden, okay? I will do that, I will get that done and more importantly than that, I will actually bring these policies for a landing and get it all done up there. It’s one thing to promise things, but when you don’t deliver on it, then it’s like, okay, then they get in and they do stuff by the time they get in.”
“It’s an important process and, you know, you respect the process and you respect the people’s decisions, how this goes. But I’m very confident that those decisions are gonna be positive for us,” he concluded.
Trump mobilized attacks against DeSantis over several polls suggesting the governor is a competitive contender against him. After initially praising DeSantis’ response to COVID, Trump claimed Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo handled COVID better than DeSantis, despite Cuomo’s administration infamously downplaying the number of elderly citizens who died in nursing homes during the pandemic.