DeSantis Campaign Press Release - Newsmax Special: Christmas with the DeSantis Family

"Particularly as we're in this Christmas season, so much of its commercialized now, but he [Jesus] ultimately is the reason for the season."

Des Moines, IA - Before the holidays, Ron and Casey DeSantis sat down with Newsmax's Bianca de la Garza for a Christmas special that dived into their faith, family traditions, and hopes for the year ahead. The highlights are below.

Watch part one HERE, part two HERE, part three HERE, and part four HERE.

On the real reason for the Christmas season:

Particularly as we're in this Christmas season, so much of its commercialized now, but he [Jesus] ultimately is the reason for the season. And that's something that's very important to our family. And it's important, you know, with our kids, to bring them up in that tradition.

On the importance of their marriage and being each other's best friend:

RON DESANTIS: My wife's my best friend. Our kids are kind of our focus in terms of what we do with life. We're very busy. I mean, just being governor is very busy. Obviously, being a candidate is busy. So the question is, when you're not doing those types of things, what do you want to do with your time? We want to spend it with our family.

BIANCA: Casey, Ron told me earlier on the campaign bus that you're his best friend. And I know some folks have used your relationship and say you're too insulated and try to use it as a negative. What do you say to those folks?

CASEY DESANTIS: The people who are criticizing us are the people who are saying that we, what, shouldn't be spending time with our family and our seven, five, and three year old's? Like there is a, you know, folks who want to go up to Washington because they like the cocktail class circuit, and they like to get, you know, in friendly with the lobbying corps. And they criticized him for coming home, in Washington when he was serving, to come call his family or go back to his office so he could talk to us and talk to his family. And so, you know, I just reject that. And I think it's absolutely ridiculous.

On campaigning with the kids:

We've brought the kids along a lot just because we just want to spend time with them, but they've been very well behaved. You know, they come out, sometimes we'll put them on the spot. We'll be on the stage, we'll get introduced as a family, and we'll ask you know, our three year old do you want to say anything, and she'll say, God bless Iowa or something like that. Our five year old son, he knows football very well. I had him up on the stage in Sioux City the morning of the Michigan/Iowa Big 10 championship game. And I put him on the spot. I didn't choreograph this. I said ''Mason, who's going to win Michigan versus Iowa? And as I'm putting the mic in front of him, I'm thinking to myself, this is a bunch of Iowa fans. If he says Michigan, he's going to get booed as a five-year-old. And he came through and he said Iowa, and everyone started cheering. So yeah, we've had a lot of fun with them.

On his optimism for the future:

I think that as we end this year, there's so many problems that we see, we've discussed some of them, with this country. There's a lot of pessimism out there. But having gone through, being in Iowa, being in some of these states, talking to people, you know, there is a basic decency in this country. There's patriotism, people are God-fearing. That's the backbone of America. The ingredients for a great comeback are there, and so I'm optimistic about the future. I know there's a lot of work that needs to be done, but we absolutely can reverse this decline and usher in a revival of the American spirit.