DeSantis Accuses Ramaswamy of “Playing to the Left” With Colorado Boycott, Tells Newsmax

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Wednesday dismissed calls from fellow GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for Republicans to remove themselves from Colorado’s ballot unless former President Donald Trump is restored, telling Newsmax he thinks the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the case. 

“I think that’s just playing into the left,” DeSantis said on Newsmax’s “Newsline.” “I’ve qualified for all the ballots. I’m competing in all the states and I’m going to accumulate the delegates necessary. That’s the whole name of the game in this situation.”

He added that he believes the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling Tuesday that Trump cannot appear on the state’s ballot in next year’s presidential primary election following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was “political,” and will therefore “get reversed.”

Ramaswamy Tuesday pledged he would remove himself from Colorado’s GOP primary ballot and stay off it until Trump’s eligibility is restored, and challenged the remaining GOP candidates, DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Chris Christie to also withdraw, reports ABC News.  ​​

If the other candidates do not withdraw, he said in a statement, “they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country.” 

Ramaswamy, just before making his pledge, told ABC News that it would be easier to win Colorado’s primary without Trump on the ballot, but he thinks the ruling is “appalling for the future of our country.”

“It’s not about me, and it’s not about another candidate,” he said after a campaign event in Iowa. “This is wrong, and I think that this is a flagrant violation of the rule of law.”

Meanwhile, DeSantis Tuesday said his campaign is continuing to gain momentum in Iowa in the weeks remaining before the state’s caucuses, even with the polls continuing to show Trump as the front-runner by a large margin. 

“We have tens of thousands of people who have committed to caucus for us,” he told Newsmax. “We have an organization in all 99 counties. We have precinct captains and over 1,000 precincts and we are marshaling more and more support every day.”

DeSantis also pointed out that “ridiculous polls” showed him losing his reelection race for governor in Florida, but “I won by 20.”

“There’s a lot of garbage out there,” he added. “We’ve got momentum here. We’re having big crowds and we’re getting more and more people to sign up. We are going to get the job done, so we’re proud of that.”

Polls, DeSantis said, have not predicted caucus races in the past “because it’s a different beast.”

“You’re talking about getting people who are going to be at a caucus site for three hours,” he said. “You’re talking about people that will speak on your behalf. People are making decisions the night of the caucus.”

DeSantis added that many people have not yet decided on a candidate, and because a pollster “pushes them in one direction [that] doesn’t mean that that’s where they’re ultimately going to end up.”

The governor further said that, unlike Trump, “I’m going to show up in the debate on Jan. 10 in Des Moines.”

“Donald Trump’s not willing to debate and he’s not willing to come and answer questions, and I think Iowans do take this process very seriously,” he said. “I think that they feel like they have an important role to play.”

DeSantis said he doesn’t know if refusing to debate has hurt Trump yet, but he thinks it will hurt him in the Iowa caucuses.

“You can’t just ignore the voters,” he said. “You can’t just sweep in here, give a speech for 40 minutes, and then fly back out. You have to listen to folks’ concerns. You’ve got to be on the ground. You have to be willing to shake their hands and tell them what you believe. That’s what we’ve done, and historically, the voted the candidates have done that, you know, have done very well.”

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