Talking to New Hampshire voters on June 27, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis outlined his plans to “reconstitutionalize” the federal government, including constitutional amendments he’d like to see passed.
DeSantis, a Republican seeking his party’s nomination in the 2024 presidential race, took probing questions from the state’s famously independent-minded voters, including from some wanting to know how his administration would be different from that of former President Donald Trump.
A 15-year-old boy named Mitchell asked a tricky question for any conservative candidate. He heard DeSantis speak at a rally last month, he said.
“I appreciated your remarks on some of the key principles that the Founding Fathers set forth and how it was our duty to uphold them,” he told DeSantis, who loves to discuss the Constitution and its Framers.
“A crucial part of our democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. Some people think that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 and beyond violated the key principles of America and the Constitution set forth by our Founding Fathers. Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power, a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?”
DeSantis, after thanking him for the question and asking where he went to high school, responded to the question. He didn’t dodge it. But he also didn’t give a yes or no answer, either. He also didn’t criticize the former president, whose supporters he’ll need in November 2024, if he gains the Republican nomination.
“Here’s what I know,” DeSantis said. “If this election is about Biden’s failures or our vision for the future, we are going to win. If it’s about litigating things that happened two or three years ago, we’re going to lose.”
He pointed to another recent transition of power—his inauguration to his second term as Florida’s governor on Jan. 5.
Two years earlier, on Jan. 6, 2021, he said, “I wasn’t anywhere near Washington that day. I had nothing to do with what happened that day. Obviously, I didn’t enjoy seeing what happened, but we’ve got to go forward on this stuff. We cannot be looking backwards and be mired in the past.”
A man named Mark posed another pointed question.
“Most of us in this room voted to drain the swamp twice,” he said. “Talk to us specifically about why you’re the right candidate for folks in New Hampshire to come behind in this primary, to drain the swamp, and get it done this time, as opposed to the other.”
DeSantis seemed to commiserate.
“I remember these rallies in 2016,” he said, referring to Trump’s campaign speeches and promises. “It was exciting. Drain the Swamp. I also remember, ‘Lock her up, lock her up.’ Right? And then two weeks after the election, ‘Ah, forget about it. Forget I ever said that.’”
He’d be different, he promised.
“No, no, no. One thing you’ll get from me, if I tell you I’m going to do something, I’m not just saying that for an election,” DeSantis said.
He won’t make promises, even if they’d benefit him politically, unless he’s sure he can follow through, he said.
DeSantis said he wants three Constitutional amendments.
One would require a balanced federal budget. Another would give the president a line-item veto “so we can line out the pork items,” he said.
The third would establish term limits for members of Congress.
“We have term limits in Florida for our legislature,” he said. “Let me tell you—it works.”
He acknowledged that term limits can put more power in the hands of former-legislators-turned-lobbyists.
“People say, ‘Oh, you know, the lobbyists will take over.’ Are the lobbyists not taking over Washington as it is? I mean, are you kidding me?”
Term limits change the incentives, said DeSantis, who served three terms in Congress representing a district south of Jacksonville.
For many congressional representatives, “their No. 1 goal is to simply stay in Congress” for 30 years, if possible, he said. Those inclined to cut spending worry, instead, about making enemies.
With term limits, he said, lawmakers know their time is limited. In Florida, they’re limited to eight consecutive years in office.
They know, he said, “I’m not going to be in this office for my whole life—this is the end of the road. I’m going to do something to leave a legacy. I’m going to swing for the fences and I’m actually going to try to do big things.”
Congress currently has every incentive to “charge it to the credit card” rather than get spending under control, he said.
He contrasted that with Florida, which like many states, requires a balanced budget. His administration had devoted part of huge surpluses to accelerating state debt payoff, he said.
DeSantis reiterated his pledge to require federal cabinet secretaries to move half of their agencies’ workforces outside the Washington area. The founders, he said, created three branches of government, but not a fourth branch, “an administrative state that operates basically without accountability and with impunity.”
Bureaucrats, he warned, now control “the most important things that affect our daily lives now—what kind of car you can drive, what kind of energy you can use, whether you can use a gas stove.”
“They are being imposed by nameless, faceless bureaucrats. Your members of Congress, who you elect, are not voting on most of these things. And so it’s been a massive transfer of power from the public to these agencies in Washington.”
“The founders would have said, 100 percent, that [that kind of unchecked] power is going to be abused. That’s why they designed checks and balances. That’s why James Madison said in one of the Federalist Papers that if men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
DeSantis said he knows he can’t do the job of top executive alone, and he’ll need thousands of people to come to Washington to serve in his administration.
“You can’t just recycle everyone from D.C.,” he said. “You’ve got to bring people from other parts of the country.”
It won’t be an easy task, he said.
Those in leadership positions shouldn’t be under any illusion, he said. They threaten the status quo, and will be viciously attacked for it, he said.
“You are not going to be treated well by the corporate press,” he said. “The corporate media, they used to say, ‘Oh, we speak truth to power.’ They run interference for the Deep State. The Deep State leaks to them, then they write that.”
So, for example, “you need an attorney general that’s got a spine of steel, that’s going to show up on Day 1 and start cleaning house, knowing they’re going to get raked over the coals,” DeSantis said.
He plans to turn the Department of Justice, the IRS, and the FBI “inside out,” including firing FBI Director Christopher Wray immediately, he said.
“The issue here is about the future of a constitutional system of government. This bureaucracy has imposed its will on us for far too long. Now is the time we the people impose our will on it.”
In answering other questions, DeSantis defended the state’s six-week limit to abortions, noting the state’s “culture of life.” He also mentioned a successful state program led by his wife, Casey DeSantis. It connects single mothers to nonprofits, charities, and businesses that can help meet their needs, and, at the same time, help them rely less on government support.
On foreign policy matters, DeSantis advocated for greater European financial support for NATO. He also repeated his conviction that the Pacific theater and containing the threat posed by China need to be the new American priority.
He highlighted his response to the high school massacre in Parkland, Florida, which occurred a year before his first inauguration. After coming into office, he removed the Broward County Sheriff from office for allegedly failing to protect schools. And he put school resource officers in every high school.
Florida also then implemented a guardian program, where teachers can elect to train and qualify to carry a concealed weapon on school grounds.
“Here’s why it’s effective,” DeSantis said. “If a school is a guardian school, it doesn’t even matter if anybody is actually doing it. Just the fact that some may be doing it—that’s going to tell these nut jobs that this is not a place we want to go. So in Florida, we make the schools difficult targets.”
