As the field of GOP candidates running to be the alternative to Donald Trump narrows, we’re beginning to see the candidates take each other on. On Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) went after former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley on WYRD in Greenville, S.C. That’s right — he called her out in her home state.
In a wide-ranging interview with host Tara Servatius, DeSantis criticized Haley’s stances on a number of issues after her $10 million ad buy gunning for the governor. He began with a salvo that she hasn’t done enough to fight for conservatives on a national level.
"She has never fought any big fight on our behalf as conservatives and won any big fight,” he said. “Anytime that guns come out, anytime the left does, she cuts and runs."
The way Haley bought into the left’s narrative about the death of George Floyd three years ago was another issue. While Haley handled tricky race-charged issues well as governor of South Carolina — including the confederate flag controversy — she sounded like a leftist when it came to the riots after Floyd’s death. DeSantis seized on that issue.
“You know, I remember when the George Floyd riots were happening. I called out the National Guard. I said I'm standing with police,” he recalled. “She was tweeting that it needed to be personal and painful for every single person. And I'm thinking to myself, why does that need to be personal and painful for you or me, we had nothing to do with it?”
“It just shows an example of her adopting this left-wing mindset and accepting the narrative,” he added. “We need leaders who are going to fight the narrative. We need leaders who are going to fight back against the left and beat the left. And I'm the only one running that has a firm track record of defeating the Democrats and defeating the left on all these issues."
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DeSantis also asserted that Haley is too beholden to big corporations. He cited her reaction to his fight with Disney as an example.
“I mean, she criticized me for standing up for kids and the innocence of their curriculum against Disney where they wanted the sexualized curriculum in elementary school,” he told Servatius. “So I stood up for parents, I stood up for kids, she sided with a woke corporation. So that is just, I think, what you see in terms of that, it's just par for the course."
He added, "She will kowtow to elite opinions, the media, and big corporations. That is how she falls down. You can pretty much set your clock to it."
DeSantis also took Haley to task for her attitude toward China. PJ Media's own Paula Bolyard recently reported how Haley allowed the state of South Carolina to make land deals with Chinese companies. DeSantis pointed out that issue in the interview and contrasted it with his approach to China.
"You know, when she was governor, her number one thing she did was to bring in the CCP, Chinese Communist Party dollars into South Carolina," he said. "She was the number one ranked governor for bringing China into their state. I banned China from buying land in Florida. I kicked them out of the universities, these things like these Confucius Institutes, so it's just a huge contrast."
DeSantis also went after Haley for her failure to enact measures to protect women and girls from predators taking advantage of the transgender madness to prey on women in bathrooms.
"In Florida, we said girls and women should be protected in bathrooms and locker rooms. You should not have boys barging in, men going in there. It's not appropriate," he said. "And so we did that without any question. Of course we're going to do that. She killed that legislation to protect girls in the bathrooms and the locker rooms. And she bragged about it. I mean, she later said, 'Oh, I stopped that in South Carolina.'"
After the interview, DeSantis responded to the latest controversy surrounding Haley, who suggested that all social media users should be verified and not anonymous.
Under Nikki Haley’s crazy, draconian plan of using govt to force people on social media to be “verified” and not anonymous, Benjamin Franklin would have been legally prohibited from publishing his Silence Dogood letters.
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) November 15, 2023
pic.twitter.com/pZ9zWnENY3
Haley said, "I want names," and Team Haley's Twitter/X bio says that it's "taking names." How literally should we take that sentiment?
DeSantis pointed out on Twitter/X:
You know who were anonymous writers back in the day? Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison when they wrote the Federalist Papers.
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) November 15, 2023
They were not "national security threats," nor are the many conservative Americans across the country who exercise their Constitutional… https://t.co/YkAGMhUVCX
DeSantis is taking a bold approach in going after Haley, who he sees as huge competition in the primaries. Time will tell if it pays off.
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