Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis insisted Tuesday night that a 2024 rematch between former President Trump and President Biden will only be a referendum on Trump's legal issues.
“This raises a question for Republicans: 'What do we want the 2024 election to be about?'” DeSantis said at a Fox News town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, according to the Associated Press. “If Donald Trump is the candidate, the election will be about legal issues, criminal justice, and January 6th. It will be a referendum on him.”
Florida Governor DeSantis also claimed during a campaign event that the Iowa caucuses, scheduled to begin on Monday, January 15, could “upend” Trump's lead in polls for the Republican nomination.
Regarding elections, he said, “In the end, it is the people who decide these things, not the polls.'' “I can tell you this: If Iowans vote for me and caucus for me in droves, we're building a game plan to do that, and the national polls will change.”
The governor was making a final appeal to undecided voters in the Hawkeye State. An Iowa poll from The Hill/Decision Desk shows him in second place behind the former president.
Earlier Tuesday, DeSantis delivered a State of the State address in Florida, where he declared a state of emergency after tornadoes struck the Fort Lauderdale area. He then boarded a plane bound for City Hall in Des Moines.
Further emphasizing DeSantis' point, while his lawyers tried to convince an appeals court panel that Trump was immune from federal prosecution for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, He spent the day in court in Washington, DC.
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