DeSantis Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Ron DeSantis on The Guy Benson Show

"Ever since we won reelection in Florida by such a historic margin, people have identified me as a threat."

Ron DeSantis today joined The Guy Benson Show on Fox News Radio for a live interview. Read the highlights below.

Listen to the full interview HERE.

On the importance of earning the nomination:

You have to earn this nomination. Nobody's entitled to it. You got to get up there. And you got to answer questions. You got to be able to defend your record, you got to be talking about your vision for the future. And I think that they want to create the narrative that somehow, he's inevitable, but I think the fact that they frantically attack me all the time, shows that they don't actually believe that. When I was at the Iowa State Fair with Kim Reynolds, that's when they did their counter program. I think he was on the ground for 45 or 50 minutes. I was the only candidate he cared about in Iowa. He came because I was there. And he wanted to try to take some of the attention away from us. So if you already had it in the bag, you would not worry about any other candidates. I've been in races where I had it in the bag. I was not out there attacking people that I was 40 or 50 points ahead of, so he owes it to people to go up there and debate.

On what he expects from the debate:

If you look at how this field develops, clearly, I'm the only guy that Trump's campaign attacks, basically. And then the other candidates, a lot of them don't really say much about Donald Trump, and they focus more on me. So we're going to be ready for all of that, it'll give us an opportunity to be able to speak to a large audience of voters who have not yet paid attention to this primary. I mean, you could have 10, 15, 20 million viewers, most of whom have probably never seen any of us in action before. So it gives us an ability to articulate our core message of, this country's in decline, we need to reverse the decline, here's how I'm going to do it. But also let them know a little bit about about me as an individual, as a dad, as a veteran and as a governor. So I think it's a great opportunity. And I'm looking forward to participating.

On attacks coming his way:

Ever since we won reelection in Florida by such a historic margin, people have identified me as a threat. The Democrats have identified me as a threat. Biden, Harris, they spend more time attacking me than anybody else, the media, they've been after me, I've probably had more hit pieces from the corporate press than any other candidate running. And then of course, Donald Trump, he started running ads against me months before I was even a declared candidate for president. I was literally down in Florida, racking up all these big historic victories that conservatives have been waiting for, for a long time, things like universal school choice, constitutional carry for second amendment, and he's dropping negative commercials against me while I'm doing that, and most people were really happy with what we're doing. So that's just kind of par for the course. But I think the reason is, is because they know, once voters key in, once they learn about me, my bio, my family, our record, and our vision, they know that that's going to be positive and a Republican primary. And so they're going to do whatever they can to try to ding me along the way. But you know what, that's just politics. That's how it goes. But you can tell what people really think, with how they behave in politics, because they can say one thing, but if they're focusing on one guy, you know, that means that that guy's a threat. And I think they see what we're doing in some of these early states like Iowa, where we have a great organization, where we're building really durable support. And it takes time to do that, but we've had a lot of success. So we're going to continue to do that. We're ready to field any incoming that people want to throw at us and we will be ready to go.