DeSantis Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Ron DeSantis' Virtual Press Conference with Iowa Media

"I think the contrast between Florida, us delivering results, and what you have in Washington is typically failure theater."

Tallahassee, FL - Ron DeSantis today held a virtual press conference with Iowa media. The highlights are below.

Watch the full press conference HERE.

On the spending fight in Washington and Kevin McCarthy:

I opposed McCarthy when it wasn't cool years ago. And he's really somebody that Donald Trump has backed and put into that position. I think that they've not delivered results. I think the contrast between Florida, us delivering results, and what you have in Washington is typically failure theater. Now this whole movement to do this motion, look, I think a lot of that is performative. I think a lot of that is the typical theatrics that we're used to saying, I'm not sure how much thought is going into that. But I can tell you this, our voters want to see results. We're sick of the talk. And a lot of these DC Republicans have promised all these things over the years and then when it comes time they don't deliver. I mean, the most recent budget bill they passed after spending nine months complaining about the open border, complaining about inflation, complaining about weaponization of federal agencies, all of that stuff is continuing with no course correction at all. I would say the government is spending too much money. That's why you are paying more for everything you're doing. Government sparked the inflation crisis that we have, government sparked the high interest rates that people are laboring under, and that's hurting families who are trying to afford a home. It's also hurting businesses who are trying to make ends meet, particularly small businesses. But you have, right now, a family that bought the average priced home five years ago, compared to the family that buys the average price home today, that mortgage payment today is over twice as much on a monthly basis than it would have been five years ago with that average price. And so this is because of what they've done in Washington. So we need a whole different approach. I will be able to bring that approach as president, because I think that unfortunately, it looks like they're going to just continue doing a lot of the same old stuff that hasn't worked in the past.

On building momentum in Iowa:

We continue to build great momentum in Iowa. We've done 58 of the 99 counties. We're going to be able to knock out a number of counties with our touring this weekend, and we're going to a lot of places that are more rural, that a lot, pretty much every other candidate is going to ignore. Those are things I think that, you know, may not necessarily wrap up, show a big difference overnight in like a poll or something. But I think that's the groundwork that you need to be able to win the caucuses. And so we're going through all 99, we will have that done, or at least 98 of them. We may save the last one for a big splash at some point. But we're going to have all of that done relatively soon. You know, looking forward, I know that, you know, in spite of what kind of the national media narratives may try to be, you know, Donald Trump is having now to campaign in Iowa. He had not wanted to campaign of course, he's not been doing debates, he's been missing in action from that. They're spending money against me, in Iowa. So that tells you kind of what the what the race is looking like. People can chirp and they can try to put narratives out but at the end of the day, you look at how campaigns behave in terms of what they see. So they clearly see that we're doing well, and they know and understand we're going to outwork everybody there.

On his strong support for law enforcement:

We've enacted a program, $5,000 Recruitment bonuses for anybody that comes from out of state or any new person in Florida, so young people that join law enforcement, they also get it because we want this to be a viable career path for a lot of people. So we've recruited officers from Chicago, we've recruited officers from New York City, we recruited officers from the west coast. In fact, I was in Southern California recently, and I was speaking with one of the police chiefs and I said, 'how are things going for you guys?' He said, 'It's really good. It's just all my police officers want to move to Florida and this is Southern California, which historically been a place a lot of people wanted to move to.' So we're proud of being a law and order state. All as president I'll be a law and order president. We're going to support the people that wear the uniform. We're going to have safe streets all across the country. We cannot allow these rogue prosecutors to get in and not enforce the law, let the criminals roam free, let the inmates run the asylum. That has destroyed a lot of cities in this country. It's destroyed San Francisco. It's destroying Los Angeles. It's destroyed Philadelphia. It's destroyed Baltimore. So that's going to stop when I'm president. And part of that is, you're going to have a president that supports the people that wear the uniform.