Chip Roy Rips Trump Over His Failure to Secure Border, Says He Would Get His Clock Cleaned in Debate
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) fired back at former President Donald Trump on Tuesday night, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Trump is scared to show up and defend his less than stellar record.
Trump called on an enterprising Republican to primary Roy — who has endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid — earlier this week despite the fact that the filing deadline for the primary. He had previously targeted the conservative stalwart in 2021, after Roy voted to certify the results of the 2020 election.
On CNN, Roy said that he is an “unapologetic defender of Donald Trump when he does things that I agree with” and criticized the Colorado Supreme Court for its decision to take Trump off the ballot in the Centennial State before praising DeSantis as a “good man” who “gets under President Trump’s skin.”
Collins followed up by noting that Trump called Roy, among the most conservative members of the House, a RINO [Republican In Name Only] and asked Roy what his response to Trump and his supporters hurling the insult at him was.
“Yeah, well, first of all, that’s not something that I’m going to spend a whole lot of time worrying about. I’m focused on the job at hand, being a member of Congress, doing the things I just told you. But the point kind of answers itself. Pretty much everybody in the conservative world who understands what we do in Washington knows that I’m a conservative with a strong record,” replied Roy.
Then he fired back:
The point is this is about we don’t have princes in this country. We pursue principles, right? That’s what we’re supposed to be about. We don’t anoint people, right? We don’t coronate people. I’ve been saying this on Fox, Newsmax, CNN, because you know what? I’m in Iowa where there are people here, who they take very seriously the job of choosing who the president will be through the caucus process. And I was just at multiple events with Ron DeSantis, where he’s shaking their hands and looking them in the eye while Donald Trump hangs out in his basement in Florida, afraid to actually debate. What’s he afraid of? You know, look, I’m happy to debate him if he wants to anywhere. I’m just a little old congressman. Why won’t he debate Ron DeSantis or any of the other candidates? I think he should.
When Collins asked Roy why Trump wouldn’t participate in the Republican primary debates, he plunged the dagger:
Well, I mean look, I can tell you what, from Ron DeSantis’s perspective it’s because he would clean his clock. I mean if you compare the records, they’re not comparable. Ron DeSantis has done a phenomenal job in Florida. He stood up to the, you know, tyrannical machine of the government when it shut down the greatest economy in the history of the world. We’ve racked up a 6 to 8 trillion dollars of debt since then as a result of the mismanagement that started in that last year of the Trump administration. President Trump also failed to actually fully secure the border. If we’d gotten the policies in place, if he had worked with conservatives to get bills passed in 2018-19, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in right now.
“I don’t think he wants to debate that record,” concluded Roy.
Watch above via CNN.
