DeSantis Campaign Press Release - Ron DeSantis on the Steve Deace Show

"Of all the candidates running, I'm most in tune with the values of the Iowa Republicans that are going to go and vote on the Iowa caucus."

DES MOINES, Iowa – Ron DeSantis today joined the Steve Deace Show. The highlights are below.

Watch the full interview HERE.

On the inability for Congress to rein in spending:

On this budget, this is just selling out everything that they ran on in 2022. You know, they said that they were going to change the way Washington operates, they said that they were going to hold these agencies accountable...the House of Representatives is supposed to, because they're armed with the power of the purse, be the people's redress for when government misbehaves, when government violates people's rights, when the government doesn't do its core functions like it's failing to do at the border. If you're willing to just simply fund the whole thing into perpetuity, then you're never going to get any of those practices changed. And so he says, oh, well, we're really concerned about a, quote, government shutdown. Well, what's going on now with the status quo is shutting down our country. It's shutting down the American dream. It's shutting down our sovereignty. Why would you want to just green light the current order things given how bad all this is? But you know, this has been standard practice, I think, for Republicans for a long time. What you really just need is leadership. I mean, I think Trump, when he was president, he had an opportunity to change some of this. It just wasn't anything he wanted to fight on. I mean, he signed a massive spending bill, I think his first or second year in office, and he pledged he would never do it again. And yet he did it, I think a half a dozen times again, culminating in Cares Act one and two, which added another $4 trillion to the debt just in his last year in office. But I think if you have a president that lays down the marker, that's going to galvanize Republican voters and a lot of independent voters around the country, and then that puts pressure on these guys to actually do what they say they're going to do.

On the countdown to the Iowa Caucuses:

I think we have the momentum. I think we're doing very well. You know, we've got tens of thousands of people that are already committed to caucus for us. We have the precincts organized, where I think 15-almost 1600 precinct captains that are going to be there, all the things you need to do to be able to maximize your vote on the Iowa caucus.And if you put a side by side between him [Trump] in 2016 riffing and really at the top of his game versus now in 2024, I mean, it's just a different guy that you're seeing there. Obviously, he's taking positions, like building a new FBI headquarters in DC that's going to cost a billion dollars-plus, he's waffled on gender ideology, and even attacked pro-life legislation. So I think it's a different candidate than the one he was in 2016. So as we come down the stretch, Iowans are going to be able to make a decision. Donald Trump's running for his issues. Nikki Haley's running for her donors' issues. I'm the one really running for your issues and your family's issues and just the sole focus on being a very disciplined, focused president to turn this country around. Of all the candidates running, I'm most in tune with the values of the Iowa Republicans that are going to go and vote on the Iowa caucus. And so I think that that's a good position to be in.

On the issues that are important to Iowas:

I definitely think the border. No matter where in Iowa I was, people are very concerned. I mean, our country has over 8 million people that are coming into this country, massive numbers. We don't know who they are. They're coming from all across the world. It's causing huge problems, of course, but then the prospect of terrorist attacks and other types of criminal activity is looming large in voters' minds. I saw that increase after the Israel attack, Israel got attacked on October 7, because I think people are just intuitively like oh wait, Israel's got the best border security in the world, and yet they got viciously attacked. Are we led to believe that an open border of the United States, that our enemies are not taking advantage of this? Of course they are. And so I think it kind of, it's countered the media thinking the only people that care about the border are people in border towns. And I went on a ride along in Wayne County, Iowa, and you see how the cartels and the illegal immigration has affected a rural county in Iowa. So every community's become a border community. And I think Iowans what somebody that's finally going to bring this issue to an end. You know, Donald Trump obviously promised to build the wall and have record deportations, and that didn't happen. We don't have an opportunity. We're not going to get a mulligan on this one. I mean, we're either going to restore this country's sovereignty now, or it may never happen.