Former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) on Wednesday jumped feet-first into the debate over which GOP 2024 presidential candidate is more dangerous for America: former President Donald Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Jolly said DeSantis, his home state governor, poses a much “greater threat.”
“Donald Trump is a brutish, transactionalist politician who will walk into a room, try to crush the Constitution, likely fail and be stopped by the courts,” Jolly said on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House.” “It leads to violence. He is a unique danger himself.”
“But in Ron DeSantis, you have somebody who bears the same fragile vanities of Donald Trump, the paranoia and the executive abuse of Richard Nixon, a view of religion and church and state like Pat Robertson, and the discreet methodologies of Attorney General Bill Barr,” the former congressman told anchor Nicolle Wallace.
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Trump could “try to topple the nation in a single day,” Jolly continued.
DeSantis “will do it by a thousand cuts.”
“And those thousand cuts include bringing and ripping our culture backwards 100 years to a pre-civil rights era, normalizing a view of race and gender and progressive ideologies and the LGBT issues that we continue to try to mainstream in the United States,” Jolly warned.
“Ron DeSantis stands in the way of a culture moving forwards,” he added, although he acknowledged both men present a “real danger to the future of our country.”
Jolly left the GOP in 2018 in protest of Trump.
Last month, he said he was considering leaving Florida with his family because of the extremist policies that DeSantis has signed into law.
“Why would I want to raise my kids in an environment in which they’re shamed for embracing diversity of thought and diverse cultures?” Jolly asked on MSNBC at the time.
“I want my children to be exposed to as much diversity as possible, and at home my wife and I can orient our family around the value set that’s right for us and prepare our kids to make decisions that are ultimately right for them as adults,” he said. “That’s not permissible in the state of Florida. You’re shamed for it, you’re unwelcome.”