This content was published on May 26, 2023 – 23:39
26 May 2023 – 23:39
Miami, May 26 (EFE).- The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who officially ran on Wednesday as a Republican candidate in the 2024 US presidential elections, said this Friday that, if he reaches the White House, will ask Congress to repeal a criminal justice reform bill signed in 2018 by former President Donald Trump.
Until now DeSantis has tried to stay out of the way and ignore Trump’s continued attacks on him, but this critical comment about the former president on The Ben Shapiro Show, a live conservative radio show, shows that the Florida governor He has decided to go on the offensive.
On the show, DeSantis called the First Step Act, a bipartisan bill passed in 2018 that reduced mandatory minimum sentences, expanded credits for well-behaved inmates, advocated for shorter sentences and had a “breakout project,” a “breakout project.” as an objective to reduce recidivism, picked up the newspaper and website The Hill.
“One of the things I would like to do as president is go to Congress and seek repeal of the First Step Act,” DeSantis said.
“If you’re in jail, you have to serve your sentence. And the idea that they’re releasing people who haven’t been rehabilitated early, so they can take advantage of people in our society, is a big mistake,” the governor stressed.
Everything indicates that now that he is officially in the presidential race (he raised $8.2 million for his campaign for the Republican primaries in the first 24 hours after the announcement of the candidacy), DeSantis and his team plan to present Trump as a politician who “has taken a turn to the left” on some issues.
DeSantis, the sixth Republican politician to run in the primary, is second in the polls but more than 30 points behind Trump, who mentored him and helped him win the 2018 Florida gubernatorial election.
Something that former president Donald Trump (2017-2021) does not forgive him and that has led him to call DeSantis, his most direct rival in the Republican primaries, “disloyal”.
Trump has spent many months relentlessly attacking DeSantis, whom he nicknames “Ron DeSanctimonious” (prude) and subjecting him to a daily avalanche of criticism on his Truth Social network and in ads, a political strategy that, for now, has paid off.
DeSantis will make his first official campaign tour next week, which includes stops in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, early voting states.
In addition to Trump and DeSantis, former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and African-American Senator Tim Scott are competing for the Republican nomination. EFE
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