On “Morning Joe” this Thursday, host Joe Scarborough and guest Jonathan Martin — the latter of whom is a writer for POLITICO — criticized Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis for his performance during the previous night’s first debate in the GOP presidential primary.
Donald Trump, who remains the front-runner in that contest, did not participate in the debate. He regularly leads everyone who did appear onstage by massive margins, though these chasms between his support and the backing enjoyed by the other contenders certainly didn’t stop the latter from trying, well, something.
“Poor Ron DeSantis melted down when they just asked him if Mike Pence did the right thing,” Scarborough mused, laughing. “It wasn’t a hard question, Ron! It’s a real simple: ‘Yeah; I like the Constitution.'”
“Ron DeSantis, on that answer, but also really more broadly his entire candidacy wants to avoid making a choice, right? He wants to be the candidate who doesn’t make the choice,” Martin remarked. “And you saw what the two choices are last night, very starkly. Choice one is the pre-Trump party. Folks like Chris Christie, and Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley, who do in fact want to make a choice and say, ‘We are pre-Trump Republicans.'” Martin went on to muse that the claimed lack of enthusiasm from DeSantis towards making that “choice” left him at odds with both the donors who seek a departure from Trump and the primary voters who, polls show, are in favor of Trump and the associated approach to politics.
At the debate, the governor — who originally was seen as solidly positioned to actually topple Trump in the GOP primary — initially refused to directly answer the question about his perspective on Mike Pence having chosen while vice president to go along with the ordinary process of certifying election results on January 6, 2021. “Mike did his duty. I’ve got no beef with him,” DeSantis eventually said, partly under pressure from Pence himself, who was also onstage. The video from “Morning Joe” was earlier flagged by Raw Story. Check out the footage below:
