DeSantis Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Ron DeSantis on Life, Liberty and Levin

"The proper policy for the US government should be that Israel can defend itself to the hilt."

Tallahassee, FL - Ron DeSantis joined Mark Levin for an interview on Fox News' Life, Liberty and Levin that aired tonight. The highlights are below.

Watch part one HERE and part two HERE.

On the Biden administration's lack of leadership and support for Israel:

This has been pathetic to watch the Biden administration do virtually nothing. Mark, they weren't even removing people from Israel who wanted to get back to America once the war started. I had to marshal planes from Florida. We brought back almost 700 people from Israel back to Florida, mostly Floridians, but not all, a lot of children. And then what Biden was doing, he would take some people from Israel, dump them in Greece, and then they have to fend for themselves, and then they send a bill to the people for that service. Meanwhile, you come to this country illegally, they'll fly you anywhere free of charge. They'll put you in a hotel free of charge. Heck, he sent $100 million to the Gaza Strip, which will be commandeered by Hamas. He did that very quickly. Yet our own citizens who are fleeing and wanting to get to safety, many of them who had children, he's charging them. So this is an administration that puts the American people last.

On being tough on Iran:

Biden comes in and he relaxes the sanctions. They've had billions of dollars in oil revenue flowing into their coffers. That regime is not going to use that money to benefit the Iranian people. They're going to use that money to fund terrorism in the Middle East and throughout the world, and the Hamas attack against Israel would not have happened but for the patronage of the Iranian regime. So anybody -- and oh, by the way, not only is Iran doing that, Iran is also funding Russia. So Biden's funding both sides of both of these conflicts that he's doing. So it's terrible policy. The first thing he should be doing is just tighten the screws financially on Iran. Starve them of oil revenue, starve them of financial sustenance. We actually did that, Mark, in Florida. I announced right after the attacks we are going to be expanding Iran sanctions, state-based sanctions, and we're going to do a special session of the Florida Legislature in early November. And we are going to do all that we can at the state level. And I know it's not as much heft as the US government, but hopefully other states will follow suit because the more we allow money to go to that regime, the more they're going to fund attacks against our allies and against the US if they could.

On Israel's right to defend itself to the hilt:

The proper policy for the US government should be that Israel can defend itself to the hilt. We will support it. They're not asking us to fight any wars for them. They have a strong defense. They take it very seriously, but what they need is the American President administration, in public and in private, supporting their effort to end Hamas as an entity, because if they don't end it, you're going to end up having attacks like this in the future, and how can you as a country live with these barbarians coming into your communities, massacring babies, raping women, and killing elderly people? You just can't live like that. Hamas would wipe the entire state of Israel off the map if they could. You don't have to live with a threat like that right on your border.

On why the US should not take refugees from Gaza:

Now Egypt won't take them, Jordan won't take them, Saudi Arabia won't take them, but yet the United States should have hundreds of thousands? And I said absolutely not. And yeah, the media was like, well, not everyone in Gaza is a Hamas terrorist. And I said, well, that's true, although they did elect Hamas and the people on the streets were cheering when Hamas did those attacks, and they also cheered when the Twin Towers were knocked down on September 11, 2001. But the issue is not even whether they're part of Hamas or terrorists. They teach kids in the Gaza Strip to hate Jews. They teach them that Israel should not exist and that they want to wipe Israel off the map. So why would we want to be importing those pathologies to our country? I'm not going to do that. We shouldn't do it. But people like AOC and I think Omar, they want to do that, hundreds of thousands of people like that or millions of people even, because they want to change this country to be in their image. And that will destroy the United States if they end up winning all these fights in the future.