Ron DeSantis Hypes Debate With Gavin Newsom By Calling Out his ‘Shadow Campaign’ for 2024

Republican presidential candidate and Florida governor, Ron DeSantis (R), was asked about his debate with California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) next week on Fox News and argued that Newsom is actually running a “shadow campaign” for president.

“Well, you know, governor, we’ve been talking over the last couple of days, actually the last couple of weeks about how the polling shows that so many people would like somebody else to be running on the Democrat side,” Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy began, adding:

Obviously, with his birthday yesterday at 81, the oldest American president, people are saying he’s too old to do that. A lot of people are saying maybe plan B is Gavin Newsom. You are going to sit across from Gavin Newsom a week from this Thursday with the big debate against Sean Hannity. I know in your head you would like to be the nominee on the Republican side. Gavin Newsom, you know, he wants to be the Democrat. Is this a preview of 2024?

“No question,” DeSantis interjected.

“Is this your dream sequence?” added Doocy.

“He is running a shadow campaign. Even people in his own party are saying that a lot of Democrats want to move Biden out,” DeSantis replied, adding:

And so, you know, you could have Harris, you could have news, you could have a lot of different people. But I think it’s important that Republican voters get the sense that that we may not be running against Biden. So I think what he’s done in California, Governor Newsom causing a mass exodus out of the state, you’ve really seen cities collapse there. That is what he would want to do for this entire country and it would accelerate the collapse we’ve seen under Joe Biden. So the stakes are really high for America.

Yes, we can sit there and talk about Florida versus California. I mean, people are flooding into Florida because we’ve stood for freedom and prosperity. They’re leaving California because they can’t even keep the streets safe unless President Xi Jinping from China comes. Then they clean everything up. But other than that, they live, people live in squalor. So I think it’s an important debate for the country. And yes, he has looming to potentially run for the Democrats. So we got to be ready for that.

Watch the full clip above via Fox News.