Ron DeSantis And Gavin Newsom Agree To Debate

 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced on Wednesday evening that he has accepted California Governor Gavin Newsom’s debate challenge.

DeSantis accepted the challenge during an interview on Fox News with host Sean Hannity, who will host the debate.

When asked by Hannity what his answer was to Newsom’s offer, DeSantis responded: “Absolutely, I’m game.”

“Let’s get it done. Just tell me when and where we’ll do it,” DeSantis said as the audience cheered. “In one respect, the debate between California and Florida has already been had, as you suggest, people have been voting on that, they’ve been voting on it with their feet, they have fled California in record numbers.”

“Florida has been the number one state for net in-migration,” DeSantis continued. “We have the number one ranked economy, number one now in education, crime rate at a 50-year-low. But in another sense, this is the debate for the future of our country because you have people like Joe Biden, they would love to see the Californication of the United States.”

“Biden may not even be the nominee,” DeSantis added. “You could have Gavin Newsom, you could have Kamala Harris. And I think if we go down that direction, that’s going to accelerate American decline. We can’t see America decline anymore. We need to reverse.”

 

The news comes as DeSantis is trailing only former President Donald Trump in the Republican Party presidential primary, according to The New York Times/Siena poll, which is rated by FiveThirtyEight as the top poll in the nation.

The poll found that no other candidates even come close to breaking into double digit territory with former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley all sitting at 3%. The remaining candidates all sit at 2% or less.

While Trump appears to be dominant at the moment with just over half of the vote in The New York Times/Siena poll, the poll showed that nearly half of the respondents who chose Trump in the poll — 46% — say that they are “considering other candidates.”