Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has broken his long silence on the Ukraine crisis, signaling his opposition to sparking a war with Russia over “border lands” halfway around the world.
Appearing on Fox & Friends this week and asked to comment on President Biden’s visit to Kiev, DeSantis attempted to blend a Reagan-style ‘peace through strength’ approach of blaming the crisis on Biden’s “weakness” with a Trump-style ‘America First’ stance.
“I’m reminded of when he was vice president, Obama and Biden opposed providing lethal aid to Ukraine during those years. And then I’m also reminded that I don’t think any of this would have happened but for the weakness that the president showed during his first year in office, culminating of course in the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan. So I think while he’s over there, I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves ‘ok he’s very concerned with those borders halfway around the world, he has not done anything to secure our own border here at home.’ We’ve had millions and millions of people pour in, tens of thousands of Americans dead because of fentanyl, and then of course we just suffered a national humiliation of having China fly a spy balloon clear across the continental United States. So we have a lot of problems accumulating here in our own country that he is neglecting,” DeSantis said.
Borrowing a phrase from Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, DeSantis accused the Biden administration of operating under “effectively a blank check policy” in Ukraine “with no clear strategic objective identified.”
“These things can escalate, and I don’t think it’s in our interest to be getting into a proxy war with China getting involved over things like the border lands or over Crimea, so I think it would behoove them to identify what is the strategic objective that they’re trying to achieve. But just saying that it’s an open-ended blank check, that is not acceptable,” the governor said.
DeSantis suggested that fears of Russia steamrolling NATO have not materialized, and claimed that Moscow has been left “really really wounded” by the current crisis. “I don’t think they are the same threat to our country, even though they’re hostile, I don’t think they’re on the same level as a China,” he said.
DeSantis appears to be seriously weighing a run for the presidency, and has begun tracing the traditional steps taken by candidates in America’s marathon, years-long presidential cycles. The politician completed a whirlwind multi-city trip to New York, Philadelphia and Chicago this week focused on ‘law and order’ issues, and has a book scheduled for release at the end of February entitled ‘The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival’.
A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll of Republican voters this week found that DeSantis’ main contender, Donald Trump, continues to maintain a substantial lead over the governor when it comes to 2024 prospects, with 46 percent saying they’d pick Trump, and 23 percent DeSantis, if the primaries were held today.
DeSantis’ line on Ukraine largely echoes that of his main possible rival for the presidency. At an event in Palm Beach, Florida Monday night, Trump said he would call Presidents Putin and Zelensky on election night after he won to push them to the negotiating table, bragging that “we could have a deal made in 24 hours.” Trump claimed that the crisis in the Donbass would never have escalated into the current Russia-NATO crisis if he had still been in office, citing his “very good relationship” with Russia's president.
In a video address posted to his Truth Social account on Tuesday, Trump warned that “World War Three has never been closer than it is right now,” and said America needs to “clean house of all the warmongers and ‘America Last’ globalists, and the deep state, the Pentagon, the State Department and the national-security industrial complex” to prevent a catastrophe.
Former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin became the latest of Trump’s allies to call on DeSantis not to run, saying this week that he’s still “young” and has “decades ahead of him where he can be our president.” Trump, meanwhile, has accused the Florida governor of showing “disloyalty” with his possible presidential ambitions, and testing out a series of nicknames against him, including “Ron DeSanctimonious” and “Shutdown Ron.” Trump announced late last week that he wouldn’t use the moniker “Meatball Ron” against his opponent, saying it would be “inappropriate” due to DeSantis’ Italian heritage.