Florida governor Ron DeSantis opened Wednesday night’s Republican primary debate by railing against former president Trump, accusing the absent frontrunner of disrespecting the electorate by once again refusing to defend his record on the debate stage.
While DeSantis began his campaign by holding his fire on Trump, he has recently begun to change course as his poll numbers have slipped. He continued that trajectory during the second GOP primary debate, slamming Trump for his administration’s record of profligate spending.
“Donald Trump is missing in action,” DeSantis declared. “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record, where they added 7.8 trillion to the debt. That set the stage for the inflation we have now.”
Asked how to address the ballooning national debt, DeSantis reflected on his record of fiscal restraint and responsibility in Florida.
“As governor of Florida, we cut taxes, we ran surplus, we paid down over 25 percent of our state debt, and I vetoed wasteful spending when it came to my desk,” he said. “And as your president, when they send me a bloating spending bill that’s going to cause your prices go up, I’m going to take out this veto pen and send it right back to them.”
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie also criticized Trump in the early minutes of the debate, saying he failed to follow through on his long-promised border wall and left office without implementing any permanent solutions to the border crisis, which has only worsened under President Biden. Christie also hit Trump for skipping the debate, giving him a new insulting nickname, in the former president’s style.
“I know you’re watching,” Christie said in a direct message to Trump. “You can’t help yourself…We’re not going to call you Trump anymore. We’re going to call you ‘Donald Duck.'”
Trump has boycotted both GOP primary debates so far, deciding to spend Wednesday in Detroit to hold a rally with striking union autoworkers. At the event, Trump knocked Biden for selling the American auto industry’s jobs to China.
“Joe Biden claims to be the most pro-union president in history. Nonsense,” Trump said Wednesday evening in an address at the Drake Enterprises plant outside Detroit. “His entire career has been an act of economic treason and union destruction. He’s destroyed unions, shipping millions of American jobs overseas while personally taking money from foreign nations hand over fist. Look at money he got from China.”
During the address, Trump largely ignored his GOP opponents, instead training his fire on Biden, who he accused of working to destroy the auto industry through his electric-vehicle push.