DeSantis Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Ron DeSantis on New Hampshire Media

"When you have a crisis situation, the important thing is to get it right. Don't worry about the political ramifications."

Tallahassee, FL - Ron DeSantis joined Adam Sexton on WMUR's The Pulse of New Hampshire.

"If you're a cartel drug runner, and you've got a satchel full of fentanyl strapped to your back, that is a hostile act because you are invading this country with deadly poison that is killing tens of thousands of people every year," said Ron DeSantis. "And it's not just a border issue. I mean, you guys in New Hampshire have had to deal with the fentanyl overdose crisis"

Watch the segment on WMUR HERE.

Ron DeSantis also joined Michael Graham on the New Hampshire Journal Podcast to talk about his initial response to COVID as Governor of Florida and his plans to end medical authoritarianism as President. Listen to the full episode HERE.

On how he charted his own course on COVID as Governor:

I think when you have people that are putting things out there, and then they're not willing to justify why they're doing it, and when you when you had people speaking out like Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford, my Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who was then at UCLA before I brought him in here--they were getting pilloried by these other scientists and doctors. And I'm just thinking to myself, "Well, wait a minute. They're raising concerns about this. You won't even debate them?" Remember, big tech was taking down articles that were critical of lockdowns. Big tech was taking down articles that said this came from the Wuhan Institute of Technology. So yeah, part of it is I had an obligation as the governor. I was the only one that actually got elected in the executive branch to look at the data myself. And yes, I can listen to these bureaucrats and I can take in their information, but I ultimately have to make the judgments. I was very hungry for data, very hungry for information, and that obviously proved to be something that benefited our state.

On why his decisions benefitted Florida:

Yes, this virus is important, and I never downplayed COVID. I mean, I knew it was an issue. But that's not even close to the sum total of just the health consequences, because the lockdown policies hurt people's health in other ways that no one wanted to talk about. Then, you have to look at education. Then, you have to look at the social order. Then, you have to look at the economy and you got to find a way to bring that in that's ultimately going to produce the best outcomes. And what I can say with Florida is, we had lower excess mortality than every state in the Sunbelt, including California, and our economy performed better than any large state in the country over this period of time.

On putting service over self-interests:

When you have a crisis situation, the important thing is to get it right. Don't worry about the political ramifications. I was totally willing to have this be the end of my administration and potentially not get reelected in 2022 if it meant doing the right thing for the state of Florida. I was at peace with that. I just was not going to contort myself into doing things that I didn't think were right because I was worried about the political fallout.

On the Trump Administration's COVID response:

He said for years how great of a job I've done as governor and how great a job Florida has done and how other states should be doing [what Florida was doing]. He ran his reelection campaign and when he came down to Florida, he said, "You guys didn't close. You guys did it, right. You're open," and all this stuff. And now, he's singing a different tune. That's just because he views me as a threat. He knows what he's saying is not true. That's just how he operates. I will note though, it's interesting for the record, his White House Task Force would send these missives down to the states about what they needed to do. And they would send them, summer of 2020, fall of 2020 and even January of 2021, mere weeks before Trump left office, they would send missives to Florida saying, you need to impose a mask mandate and you need to close businesses. They were telling me to close businesses, Deborah Birx and her task force in January of 2021. And so, he [Trump] gave an interview today, with Hugh Hewitt, where he said that he couldn't fire Fauci. And that is not true. He put Fauci on the Task Force; he deferred to Fauci. Those policies coming from his task force were Fauci. He could have removed him from the task force at any time and he did not do it.