Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday showed new urgency in taking on Donald Trump, attacking the former president at every turn at a CNN town hall in Iowa with the state’s caucuses less than five weeks away.
In the town hall at Grand View University in Des Moines, moderated by CNN’s Jake Tapper, DeSantis turned most questions into opportunities to contrast his record as governor with Trump.
The economy? Trump “set the stage” for rising inflation, DeSantis said. The border crisis? Trump didn’t complete the wall, and Mexico didn’t pay for it, he said. Abortion? Trump is “flip-flopping on the right to life,” the Florida governor claimed.
Here are takeaways from DeSantis’ CNN town hall:
DeSantis came out of the gate with a clear focus on closing his polling gap in the Hawkeye State with Trump.
He took an early shot at Trump, blaming the former president for the country’s inflation woes under current President Joe Biden and for his Republican rival’s actions at the start of the Covid pandemic.
“Shutting down the country was a huge mistake, printing trillions and trillions of dollars was a huge mistake,” he said.
Later, he dinged Trump for failing to finish the wall at the US-Mexico border as he had famously promised in 2016; for not debating him; for criticizing Florida’s new six-week abortion ban; and for not replacing Obamacare with a Republican alternative.
“When he gets off the teleprompter now, you don’t know what he’s gonna say,” DeSantis said. “It’s a different Donald Trump than in ‘15 and ‘16. You know, back then he was colorful, but it was really America First, about the policies. Now a lot of it’s about him.”
It was a striking string of attacks, though, not because it covered new ground. DeSantis has lobbed similar critiques at Trump on the…
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