In a Saturday Town Hall in Lavonia, New Hampshire, Florida Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis called out former President Donald J. Trump for his post on Truth Social saying the FBI should stay in D.C. and be given a "new and spectacular building."
WATCH—DeSantis completes his thoughts on the FBI around 22:13.
It appears that DeSantis is intent on bringing the necessary fire to his opponents ahead of the January 23 primary in the state. DeSantis was joined by Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who introduced him and gave his reasons why he endorses DeSantis for President. The rest of the Town Hall and the governor's response to questions are worth a listen as he defines what leadership looks like.
WATCH:
DeSantis took to X and posted this to reinforce his salvo:
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He's not wrong. It's possible Trump is simply flame-throwing and attempting to use sarcasm to reinforce the point that the FBI needs to concentrate on actual crime. But advocating to leave the headquarters in D.C. and give them a new building, comes off as short-sighted and a bit tone-deaf; especially in light of Trump's own troubles with the federal law enforcement agency. A decentralized FBI would probably not have implemented the orders to raid Mar-a-Lago over the supposed misuse of classified documents. Too much political power and influence is deeply embedded in an agency that is supposed to be the law enforcement arm of the United States and separate from any political influence.
In June 2023, DeSantis outlined plans that were exclusively reported by Real Clear Politics on how he would "drain the swamp," if he is elected president.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been working for months on plans to tear down and rebuild both the Department of Justice and the FBI, consulting with experts and members of Congress to develop a “Day One” strategy to end what conservatives see as the weaponization of the justice system.
The governor has privately told advisors that he will hire and fire plenty of federal personnel, reorganize entire agencies, and execute a “disciplined” and “relentless” strategy to restore the Justice Department to a mission more in line with what the “Founding Fathers envisioned.”
But his ambitions go beyond bureaucratic restructuring. He wants to physically remove large swathes of the DOJ from the District of Columbia, including FBI headquarters, RealClearPolitics is first to report.
“We’re not going to let all this power accumulate in Washington, we’re going to break up these agencies,” DeSantis said during a private strategy session over the weekend, excerpts of which were obtained exclusively by RCP. He vowed in that call to order “some of the problematic components of the DOJ” be uprooted, reorganized, and then promptly “shipped to other parts of the country.”
With the FBI's record of parents being labeled domestic terrorists, Catholics being targeted and discriminated against, and pro-lifers being arrested while anti-life violence against churches and pro-life centers gets ignored, one could surmise that the majority of American voters would more quickly be on board with DeSantis' plans to decentralize the FBI, rather than reward them with a shiny, new, bigger building. Trump's rallying cry of "Drain the Swamp," may well have come back to bite him on the hind parts. As DeSantis so ably outlined, bloated federal bureaucratic power and overreach is a huge problem across the board, and an issue the Republican Party and the Trump and Haley campaigns seemingly refuse to address. As my colleague Bonchie wrote back in August:
There's willful blindness going on among GOP voters as many of them focus solely on defeating Ron DeSantis in the primary. But rest assured, what seems like a calm before the storm is going to turn into a hurricane by the time the general election rolls around. Buckle up.
Only fifteen days to Iowa, where the 2024 presidential race officially begins.
