DeSantis Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Ron DeSantis Takes Questions from Voters in South Carolina: "I am sick of our country being invaded, and we are going to fight back."

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Ron DeSantis answered questions from voters at an event in Tega Cay, South Carolina tonight. The governor will visit Columbia tomorrow morning to become the first Republican presidential candidate to file for the South Carolina primary and will later formally unveil his military policy in a press conference at 10:30am ET.

Watch a recording of the event HERE.

On protecting children from the Left's indoctrination:

"First of all, as a dad of a six, a five, and a three-year-old, my children are not his children. I can tell you that. But when he's sitting here talking about all of our children, I have something to say to him. Why don't you focus on spending more time with your granddaughter in Arkansas, or at least acknowledge she exists before you worry about our children? And they [Leftist protestors] shouldn't be worrying about our children either. We don't want you indoctrinating our children, leave our kids alone!"

On firing Fauci:

"I will say I was very disappointed in 2020, when he did not fire Dr. Fauci. And I would have done that. His explanation for it was, initially he used to say, 'if you fire Fauci, there'd be a firestorm because the media and the left would get upset.' Of course they would get upset. They have a spasm every time I roll out of bed in the morning, that's not a reason to not do what's right. And I just thought that Fauci by June, July of 2020, was so wrong. He was attacking Florida for being open. He was trying to have schools closed, he eventually moved to try to force-vaccinate. He was doing things that clearly were damaging the country. And you know, when I told people in Florida — because you know, I worked really hard for him [Trump] in Florida, and some of them were upset, but I'd say, 'look, he's going to do it he's just going to probably wait till the election is over' and look, I would have done it as soon as possible. I would not have waited to the election. Leadership is not worrying about the blowback. Leadership is doing what's right. Nevertheless, I said he'll do it after the election. The election happens, and he didn't do anything for Fauci and in fact, January 19, 2021, his last day in office, he gave Anthony Fauci a presidential commendation. That was a punch in the gut, I think, to me, who fought Fauci's lockdowns, who fought to have kids in school and I know it was a punch in the gut to Republicans across the country who had suffered under some of those lockdowns. And at the end of the day, if you say you're going to slay the deep state, you didn't do it in four years, not just — I think everybody has to agree. He did not drain the swamp. That's just the reality. The swamp got the best of him. There was a lot that he had to deal with but it didn't get drained. But if you're not willing to admit you should have fired Fauci, well how the heck are you going to drain this going forward? Fauci is like the swamp dweller number one that you would need to get rid of. So that's a huge, huge difference between the two of us."

On his plan to secure the border and stop the invasion:

"I also look forward to restoring this country's sovereignty, particularly at our southern border. We've heard a lot about this over the years. They talk about doing all this, and it's never quite gotten done. On day one, we're going to declare it a national emergency, we're going to mobilize all available resources, including the U.S. military. Yes, we will actually build the border wall which we need. We've got massive open spaces down there, hundreds and hundreds of miles with no barrier at all. We'll do that. But we are going to do something that no president has been willing or able to do. We are going to hold the Mexican drug cartels accountable for what they are doing to this country.

It's humiliating as an American, to go down to that border, which I've done many times, and to find out or be reminded that the Mexican drug cartels have more control of what's going on at our southern border than the United States government does. It's pathetic, and Biden has let this happen. What does that mean for people throughout our country? It means tens of thousands of overdoses from the fentanyl that's being brought across the border. It means human trafficking, in terms of minors being trafficked across the southern border. It has caused massive amounts of carnage because we don't have the capability or the will to be able to enforce our border... We're going to have Border Patrol out there, military out there. If cartels are breaking through our wall to try to smuggle in drugs, that's going to be the last thing they do because they're going to end up stone-cold dead by trying to do that. I am sick of our country being invaded, and we are going to fight back."

On his plan to combat the threat of Communist China:

"Today, and on January 20, 2025, the top threat to this country is the Chinese Communist Party. That is without question. And what I see our foreign policy elite doing is they're taking their eye off that ball. They are under the delusion with people like Janet Yellen saying, oh, you know, we're having a friendly competition, we're competitors, No. China has serious ambitions under President Xi. They've spent the last several decades... you know, remember the DC elites, what did they do? They said, if you put China in the World Trade Organization, if you grant them most favored nation status, that yeah, they would get wealthier, but then they would become more democratic and more peaceful. What you've had is China, they're now the dominant manufacturing power in the world, some of our manufacturing has been totally decimated in pockets of this country. In ways that have been really bad, not just economically, but it's created despair in many communities around this country. We were sold, basically a bill of goods because China has used that money, they have built the second strongest military in the world and they have designs, not just in Taiwan, but places in the Pacific, and even here in the Western Hemisphere. Yet, we're running out of ammunition, we're running out of weapons stocks, we don't potentially even have what we would need to respond to some contingency in the Asian-Pacific. Here's how these people think; the only thing they recognize is hard power. If you have the ability to project power in their backyard, they will respect that. And they are not going to want to mess with that. And my fear is under Biden, we're proceeding in a way that there's a lot of weakness. It's inviting more Chinese aggression. And we are on a path, not today or next week, but we're on a path where we could end up fighting and losing a war against China. The best way to avoid that is to take the threat seriously, to ensure our military is back in line, and that we have what we need to be able to work with our allies in the region to deter Chinese aggression. If you look at how weak we are abroad now, and all these cultural problems at home. If we don't get our act together, 25 years from now, school children in this country are going to be forced to learn 37 different pronouns in Mandarin and we cannot let that happen."

On protecting Floridians from CCP influence:

"I will prioritize China as the top threat to this country. Our foreign policy elite in Washington does not do that. They're still stuck in a post-World War Two mindset where they think Europe and NATO is the most — now look NATO's important, they're allies, fine, but you cannot honestly look at the threats of this country and say anything even approaches China. It's not just the military deterrence. We need economic independence from China, they have so much stuff that we depend on now. It's put us in a vulnerable situation, we need to bring that industry back and we're probably not going to get everything, but we need the key things for our economy have got to be brought here, and we need more advanced manufacturing.

We also need to look at the cultural influence that the CCP has in our own society. I mean, they have an ability to call up a Hollywood studio exec and have them censor movies just at the behest of the Chinese regime. They put things in our universities like Confucius Institutes. We banned them in Florida, but they're in other parts of the country. They fund research in our universities, they steal our trade secrets, they're trying to get farmland in Florida, we banned the purchase of farmland, all land in Florida, by the CCP and we need to do that nationwide. I think it's a full-spectrum approach. And I think we need to get serious about them as being a top adversary."