DeSantis Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Ron DeSantis on Fox and Friends

"If you harm American servicemembers, you should have hell to pay."

Tallahassee, FL - Ron DeSantis today joined Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends live. The highlights are below.

Watch the full interview HERE.

On his upcoming foreign policy plan:

We're going to unveil a whole-of-government approach to deal with what really is our top threat, the Chinese Communist Party. If you look what's happening in Gaza and Israel and Hamas, you know, that's all funded by Iran. Who's Iran's leading benefactor right now with the black market oil sales? China. You look at Russia and Ukraine, who's Russia's main benefactor? China. Who represents a peer competitor to us militarily and increasingly economically? China. We're back in an era of great power rivalry after the end of the Cold War and the age of terrorism. We still have a lot of other threats, but we've got to get the China issue right. And so, I'm going to have a policy that's going to get that job done.

On Joe Biden's rudderless foreign policy:

I think Joe Biden is a fierce opponent of the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. He's been that for a long time. And he uses these as an example, as a pretext to advance an agenda he always wants to do. Look, this guy in Maine, we're going to get more information. Hopefully, they catch him soon. He's obviously very dangerous. He had a mental health intervention. This is not just a run of the mill, law-abiding American, and something happened that he was still allowed to be out there. So focus on the individual, rather than trying to nuke the rights of every law-abiding citizen. And then on the Syria strikes, Brian, it seems to me we've got troops there, it's not clear to me that we have enough troops to really make an impact with whatever they're trying to do. And yet, we have enough troops to where they're going to be able to be targets. And so, they're kind of sitting ducks there. I don't know what the strategic objective of them being there is. But this is an example of, I think, Biden's rudderless foreign policy.

On protecting our kids in schools:

You we had the Parkland shooting the year before I became governor, so I became governor and I took the lessons from that and the recommendations, and we've created really strong school security, we have SROs in every school, we have different layouts to make it so that they're hard targets and not soft targets. We've put over a billion dollars into that. I'm a parent of a six, five, and a three year old. Trust me, that school security is very, very important. But to go to millions of Americans and blame them for this stuff -- that's not the way to do it. Also, Brian, I'd say this, you look a lot of the guys who commit violent crime, and yes, less than what we saw in Maine, a lot of these people go in and out of the justice system because of liberal soft-on-crime policies. You do a crime, you should do the time. Stop cycling people back out. That will make communities safer, and Biden doesn't want to do that.

On supporting American troops:

If you harm American servicemembers, you should have hell to pay. Now, I'm not sure Biden's policy with how he's deploying those troops is the right one. He's not really articulated why that's there. It seems like the risks are better than the benefits in terms of that, but put that aside, wherever our troops are, if you're taking potshots at them, you better be prepared to get return fire. We're not going to let our troops be sitting ducks.

On his upcoming debate with Gavin Newsom:

It is set for November 30 on Fox News, and I saw him over there groveling with Xi Jinping and I thought to myself, you know, these are two guys who locked down their people, violated their rights, you know, imposed medical authoritarianism, and really hurt their societies. And they both had really the same playbook with respect to COVID-19.