Former President Donald Trump took aim at GOP presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday, telling Newsmax that "DeSanctimonious, as I call him," has "dropped like a rock."
"He's dropped like an ailing bird out of this sky, and I think he's finished," Trump said on "Greg Kelly Reports."
The former president took umbrage with an assertion that DeSantis made during Wednesday night's first GOP presidential debate, skipped by Trump.
"And I can tell you this, as your president, I will never let the deep state bureaucrats lock you down. You don't take somebody like Fauci and coddle him," DeSantis said during the debate. "You bring Fauci in, you sit him down, and you say, 'Anthony, you are fired.'"
Kelly asked Trump if it sounded like DeSantis was suggesting that Trump had coddled Fauci.
"I will tell you that [DeSantis] loved Dr. Fauci, and I'll send you some articles tomorrow. He said, 'Let's not do anything, we don't have the approval of Dr. Fauci.' Dr. Fauci, Dr. Fauci, that's all he talked about is Dr. Fauci," Trump told Kelly. "This guy forgets history.
"But I'll tell you, he loved Fauci, but he also locked down the state. His beaches were locked down. His roads were locked down and now, he's trying to pretend that none of this stuff happened.
"If you look at his record, you're going to see something that's so different from what people say," Trump added. "He was a big believer in the vaccines. This guy had lines for miles of people getting vaccines. Now, he pretends like, 'Oh, can I think about that?'
"I don't want to call people liars, but if you check his record, it's easy," Trump said about DeSantis toeing the Fauci line.
"Eventually, when it became not a good thing to say that, all of a sudden it became, 'Dr Fauci, who is that?' Look this guy, he's dropped like a rock. He's dropped like an ailing bird. I think he's finished, but he's just somebody with a very short memory."
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Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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