Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pledged to abolish four federal agencies should he become President, including the Department of Education and the Internal Revenue Service.
DeSantis indicated in a Fox News interview that a vital part of his administration would be limited government.
When asked by anchor Martha MacCallum about abolishing any federal agencies outright, the Florida governor had some very specific entities in mind.
“So we would do education, we would do commerce, we’d do energy, and we would do IRS, and so if Congress will work with me on doing that, we’ll be able to reduce the size and scope of government,” he said.
And if Congress isn’t willing to work with him?
“If Congress won’t go that far, I’m going to use those agencies to push back against woke ideology and against the leftism that we see creeping into all institutions of American life,” DeSantis vowed.
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DeSantis Will Abolish Education, Energy, And Commerce Departments
MacCallum seemed to be a bit skeptical when DeSantis vowed to abolish the four federal agencies, questioning the proposal regarding the IRS.
But this is where DeSantis has excelled in Florida, fighting woke ideology that has crept into every facet of government and eliminating it from those institutions.
The Department of Education is long overdue for elimination with its bloated budgets yielding lesser results for our children. The IRS is being weaponized by Democrats and now expanded to go after taxpayers. They can go too, and we should replace everything they do with a simple flat tax plan.
And considering Democrats have thoroughly weaponized the Justice Department against their political opponents, DeSantis might want to consider abolishing DOJ too.
In all, it would be a good start. Can he do it? That’s a whole different equation.
— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) June 29, 2023
That said, DeSantis seems pretty confident and even took a jab at former President Donald Trump’s inability to “drain the swamp.”
He explained that America needs to “fundamentally re-constitutionalize the government.”
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What a concept!
“We talked about draining the swamp in 2016; that didn’t happen,” he said. “I think the better analogy is breaking the swamp.”
.@RonDeSantis Says Washington is not Florida, Knows It Won’t be Easy ‘Break the Swamp’
Reported by @javmanjarres via @Floridianpress https://t.co/SfpXZyKBiv
— The Floridian (@Floridianpress) June 29, 2023
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DeSantis Says He’ll Have Drug Dealers Shot ‘Stone Cold Dead’ At The Border
Another comment during this interview that perked up people’s ears, aside from seeking to abolish large swaths of government bureaucracy, was a proposal to take down drug smugglers at the border.
“People are dying by the tens of thousands because of the fentanyl that’s trafficked in,” he told MacCallum. “And we talk a lot about the porous border, and it is very porous, and it’s sad, and there are vast expanses where there’s no wall, no barrier. We’re going to obviously build the wall and do that.”
But, he noted, some drug runners have actually cut through the wall to continue their trade. For those individuals, DeSantis wants to arm border protection with appropriate rules of engagement.
“So my view as commander-in-chief would be is we have to have appropriate rules of engagement to say, if you’re cutting through a border wall on sovereign U.S. territory and you’re trying to poison Americans, you’re going to end up stone-cold dead,” he explained.
Careful, Mr. DeSantis. The media will quickly turn that into “DeSantis Vows to Shoot Innocent Migrants.”
“If you are in the cartels cutting through our fence to bring drugs in … that’s going to be the last thing you do. We’re going to leave you STONE COLD DEAD.”
??? pic.twitter.com/sV83ma6H57
— DeSantis War Room ? (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 29, 2023
Trump’s campaign sent out a Mediaite column suggesting DeSantis’s plan to kill drug dealers is essentially “copying” the former President.
A report surfaced in February claiming Trump would also like to deter crime in America by expanding the use of the death penalty for violent criminals and drug dealers, even so far as to suggest airing live executions on television.
That report was disputed by his campaign. Trump has, however, suggested the death penalty could deter drug dealers.
“Some countries have a very, very tough penalty, the ultimate penalty,” he explained. “By the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do.”
Pres. Trump on drug dealers: “Some countries have a very, very tough penalty—the ultimate penalty. And by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do.” pic.twitter.com/bundqIiSMQ
— ABC News (@ABC) March 1, 2018
Trump as President also reportedly inquired on at least two occasions about secretly bombing illegal cartel drug labs and was widely ridiculed over the idea.
NEW: Mark Esper recounts Trump asking the stunned SecDef if the government could fire missiles into Mexico and then pretend it wasn’t the US who did it in his new memoir https://t.co/eINzwh4gI4
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 5, 2022
Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, in his memoir “A Sacred Oath,” indicated Trump during his first term was keenly focused on the constant flow of drugs across the southern border from the drug cartels.
“We could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” Esper claimed Trump articulated. “No one would know it was us.”
It will certainly be interesting to see how the battle for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination turns out.
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