'You Deserve To Have A Secure Border': DeSantis Sees Major Success In Iowa Speech, Slams Biden Over Border Failure

On Saturday, Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) came out in a show of force, stating firmly that he would immediately close the southern border to restore order from the current chaos. DeSantis called out President Joe Biden, urging that the aging president “put us in" in order to fix the border.

DeSantis spoke in front of a full audience at Representative Randy Feenstra’s (R-IA) third annual Family Picnic, held in the Sioux Center in Iowa, per the New York Post.

“I’d shut down the border immediately — why are we letting this happen?” the Florida governor asked. “It’s hurting people. You deserve to have a secure border, you deserve to have a rule of law.”

“Don’t tell me foreigners can just decide to come across the border when they want to. We decide who comes into this country as Americans. We have every right to have that border secured and not have this disaster unfolding,” DeSantis adamantly proclaimed to the packed audience.

DeSantis was not shy about his successes in handling the border crisis in Florida. During his speech, DeSantis spoke on how his administration worked to ban sanctuary cities in the state as well as giving state personnel to the Coast Guard to prevent boats of migrants from arriving in the Sunshine State. ​​“Since August, we’ve repatriated over 12,000 illegal aliens back to Haiti and some of these countries. And guess what happens? They stop coming. We don’t have as many boats coming.”

DeSantis was more than happy to take a shot at Joe Biden for his failure to quell the surge of migrants along the US-Mexico border, stating, “We’ll get cracking on this wall, Joe. Put us in, we’ll get it done.” 

DeSantis’ speech also covered many other notable topics for the upcoming election, of which he is expected to be making his presidential bid announcement in the coming weeks. 

DeSantis never specifically referenced Trump during his speech, but he did allude to the former president and changes the Republican party may need to change to better prepare for the party’s future. 

“We must reject the culture of losing that has infected our party in recent years, that time for excuses is over. We’ve got to demonstrate the courage to lead and the strength to win,” he states about the GOP. “If we do that, if we make the 2024 election a referendum on Joe Biden and his failures … if we get distracted, or if we focus the election on the past or other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again. And I think it’ll be very difficult to recover from that defeat.”

Trump was also supposed to hold a rally in Iowa the same day but had to cancel due to tornado warnings in the area.