Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) made his presidential pitch to New Hampshire voters on Friday, touching on his conservative border policies and defending his record of passing right-wing legislation in Florida while throwing jabs at the current administration.
DeSantis renewed his commitment to “use deadly force” against the cartel to solve the fentanyl and drug crisis at the southern border, pledging to build a border wall if he attains the Oval Office.
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“Day one, we’re declaring it to be a national emergency,” DeSantis said on WMUR 9 News‘s Conversation with the Candidate on Friday. “I’m going to do what no president has been willing to do. We are going to lean in against the cartels directly, and we are going to use deadly force against them.”
He blamed President Joe Biden for not doing enough to stop the cartel from bringing in fentanyl precursor chemicals from China, resulting in thousands of overdose deaths in the nation every year.
The GOP presidential candidate touched on topics including abortion and Florida’s new black history curriculum before taking questions from the audience of New Hampshire voters.
DeSantis signed into law one of the nation’s most stringent abortion bans, preventing abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, pushed through by the Republican-dominated Florida legislature
“We protected, in Florida, the rights for unborn babies that have a detectable heartbeat,” DeSantis said, adding, “That was something that was right for our state.”
The conservative governor acknowledged the “diversity of opinion in the United States” regarding abortion but wants to “promote a culture of life.” He attacked California for having “post-birth abortion” in the state. DeSantis agreed this week to debate Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), a rival who falls on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
DeSantis and Vice President Kamala Harris have been feuding over Florida’s new standards for teaching black history since the Florida Board of Education passed the curriculum last week.
“No political agenda — just do what was true,” DeSantis said, defending his state’s changes, which include instruction on how slaves benefited from skills that they learned.
“Kamala Harris then comes down and everyone was saying to fight the institution of slavery’s expansion, and ultimately, the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln was the vehicle to extinguish slavery in this country,” DeSantis said.
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Like many Republican candidates, DeSantis has positioned himself as an “anti-woke” politician, calling “woke” a “form of cultural Marxism.”
“I think it’s important that we fight against it because our society does need to be rooted in truth,” DeSantis said.
