Beaufort, S.C. — President Joe Biden’s fall at a U.S. Air Force graduation ceremony on Thursday was a “sad thing to see,” but was symbolic of his leadership and the direction he is leading the country, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis told a crowd in South Carolina.
Speaking Friday morning to a large crowd near Beaufort, in the Lowcountry region of the state, DeSantis addressed the video of the 80-year-old president “stumbling around.”
“You know, honestly, it’s a sad thing to see,” DeSantis, 44, said. “You don’t want to see anyone do that. But it was frustrating because, honestly, that was symbolic of the state of our country.”
“Our country continues to stub its toe, our country continues to trip and fall,” he continued. “Our country continues to go in the wrong direction.”
Biden was quickly helped to his feet after tripping over a sand bag while handing out diplomas on-stage. A White House spokesman said he’s doing “fine” after the accident.
DeSantis is campaigning Friday in South Carolina, the third state on the GOP presidential map, after touring Iowa and New Hampshire earlier in the week, part of his “Our Great American Comeback Tour.” The Florida governor is pitching himself as a champion of conservatism and a warrior against woke ideology who can defeat Biden next year.
While Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states on the Republican presidential map, typically get the most media attention, South Carolina could be equally, if not more, critical for DeSantis and the other GOP presidential contenders. It is bigger and more diverse than Iowa and New Hampshire, and it is home to a variety of Republican voters – social conservatives dominate the Upstate region, fiscal conservatives dominate the Lowcountry, and there are active-duty military members and veterans all over.
Over the last four decades, every Republican who has won the presidency first won the South Carolina primary.
“South Carolina is really pivotal,” DuBose Kapeluck, chair of the political science department at the Citadel, told National Review this week.
DeSantis started the day speaking for about an hour from a stage behind a local restaurant. He then headed north for an afternoon event near Lexington, a suburb of Columbia, the state capital. At that event, held inside a decorated barn, DeSantis was joined on stage by his wife, Casey, for a more relaxed conversation with supporters.
He is expected to end the South Carolina trip Friday night in Greenville, a fast-growing city in the state’s deep-red upstate region.
During his Beaufort rally, DeSantis said he is running to take on the weaponized bureaucracy of the federal government and the “woke mind virus” that has infected the left. While rattling through his record and his successes in Florida, he called for a return to “common sense” and “law and order,” and pitched himself as a leader who is willing to buck the establishment.
“I’m going to do the right thing for the right reasons, and let the chips fall where they may,” he said from the stage, with a blue South Carolina state flag draped behind him.
DeSantis also noted his blue-collar roots and his military service. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy after graduating from college, and served as an officer and a lawyer in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps. His status as a veteran could be an advantage in South Carolina, which has one of the largest concentrations of active-duty military members and veterans in the country.
“He is the only candidate in the race that has worn our country’s uniform,” said state representative Chris Murphy, who introduced DeSantis Friday morning. “We need a commander and chief who answered the call to duty.”
At the beginning of his morning speech, DeSantis addressed the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. “I think we’re all still upset about the fact that we lost 13 service members in Afghanistan due to the incompetence and dereliction of duty of President Joe Biden,” he said.
He also talked about his decision to join the Navy in 2004 after graduating from Harvard Law School. He could have made “a lot of money” doing something else, he said. “I had never had any money.”
“But at the same time, this was after September 11,” he added. “There were a lot of people who were raising their hand to serve, and I felt a duty to do my part.”
There is a certain sense of pride that people who serve in the military have, he said.
“The satisfaction that comes with wearing the cloth of your country and serving beside other fellow patriots, and by serving a cause greater than yourself, well, that’s satisfaction money just can’t buy,” DeSantis told the crowd.
But, he said, he’s hearing from too many veterans that they would not recommend that their kids or grandkids sign up to serve. The military, he said, is too “woke,” and he noted that thousands of soldiers were forced out of service because they wouldn’t get the Covid-19 vaccine. He vowed to give them their jobs back if they want them.
He vowed to put the military “on a better path.”
“The recruiting has suffered,” DeSantis said, “because people want to join an institution they have confidence in, that they know is focused on the mission.”
Nick Moretti, 48, an Air Force vet who attended the morning rally with his wife, Jennifer, said he likes that DeSantis is a veteran as well. “He understands what the veterans are going through,” said Moretti, who described himself as an independent voter who is leaning toward supporting former president Donald Trump again.
Jack Perry, 86, a Navy veteran from Sun City, South Carolina, attended to morning rally to hear DeSantis’s pitch. He’s leaning toward supporting DeSantis because he said Trump can’t seem to keep his mouth shut and stop making people angry.
Perry agreed that DeSantis’s status as a veteran is important. It helps to prepare leaders, he said, and there’s a “kind of fellowship” between veterans, particularly form the same branch.
Steve Biernacki, 69, who attended the Beaufort rally, previously voted for Trump, but is now leaning toward backing DeSantis. There is too much “noise” around the former president.
“I like DeSantis. I like what he has done,” Biernacki said. “Hopefully he can turn this country back around.”
Jackie Kanoy, 61, who attended DeSantis’s afternoon rally near Lexington with a friend, said she is strongly leaning toward supporting the governor in the primary, because “I like everything he says he stands for.” She agreed with DeSantis that Biden is not fit to be president.
“He’s supposed to be representing America and the USA,” she said. “He is not capable.”
The Palmetto State could pose a particular challenge for DeSantis. Not only will he have to face off against Trump, who continues to dominate the state’s political landscape, but South Carolina is also the home of two other Republican presidential contenders, former governor Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott, both of whom remain popular in the state and will need to make a strong showing here.
Though polling so far is slim, nine months out Trump appears to have a solid lead in the state. Trump had a 25-point lead over DeSantis (43 percent to 18 percent) in a late-May National Research Inc. poll, with Scott and Haley in third and fourth with 12 percent and 10 percent respectively. The poll was released before DeSantis officially joined the race.
“I believe that whoever is going to be the Republican nominee has to win here,” said state Senator Josh Kimbrell, a DeSantis supporter from the conservative upstate region. “And I believe DeSantis can win here. I think DeSantis has a much bigger chance of winning here than he does in New Hampshire or even Iowa.”