DeSantis says he'd fight 'woke' ideas, fire FBI director in NC presidential pitch

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took the stage to a cheering crowd Friday at the North Carolina Republican Party’s annual convention, saying he would tackle government bureaucracy, wage war on ‘woke’ ideology, and restore the “Fort Bragg” name if elected president.

He also made oblique references to the legal woes of his chief political rival — former President Donald Trump — who is scheduled to speak at the convention Saturday as he, too, pursues the party’s nomination."Our great American comeback will begin when we send Joe Biden back to his basement in Delaware," DeSantis said, pitching his 2024 campaign to influential conservative politicians, activists and party insiders from around the state.

Polls show GOP voters tend to support giving former President Donald Trump another chance at the presidency. But no polls have come out since the federal government charged Trump with dozens of criminal charges related to classified documents, in an indictment made public just hours before DeSantis’ speech.

DeSantis has been running a campaign aimed at winning over Trump supporters, in large part by portraying himself as a similar — if not more conservative — candidate, and one who would be more electable in the general election against Democratic President Joe Biden, who beat Trump once already.

"We see woke ideology run amok," DeSantis said after listing off a litany of worries about border security, crime rates, COVID-19 regulations and the federal government's recent decision to change Fort Bragg's name to Fort Liberty. DeSantis promised that as president he'd restore the Fayetteville military base's old name, in honor of a Confederate general, to loud cheers from the crowd.

Trump’s speech Saturday will be one of his first opportunities to publicly comment on the 37 federal criminal charges he faces — which is separate from the other state charges he faces in a New York criminal case related to hush money paid to pornographic film star Stormy Daniels.

In the new criminal case, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged that Trump stole and improperly shared classified documents, then committed more crimes trying to cover it up.

North Carolina Republican Party spokesman Jeff Moore confirmed Friday that Trump is still planning to travel to Greensboro for his speech. The convention will provide Trump a rally-like environment to try to convince Republicans not to abandon his third presidential campaign, despite the list of criminal charges.

Trump’s former vice president — and now political enemy — Mike Pence is also speaking Saturday at the convention to tout his own presidential campaign. Pence and Trump soured following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump supporters hunted for Pence and chanted death threats during the attack, after Trump criticized Pence for not cooperating with efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

DeSantis briefly addressed Trump's new criminal charges, hinting that he thought they were politically motivated. He warned attendees that Washington was full of bureaucrats who had little accountability and were therefore abusing their power.

He promised to fire the head of the FBI in one of his first acts as president, and indicated that if Trump was going to be charged, Hillary Clinton should've been charged for crimes, too — an echo of Trump's 2016 mantra, "lock her up."

"Is there a different standard of justice for a Democratic Secretary of State and a Republican Former President?" DeSantis said.

“There needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let's enforce it on everybody and make sure we all know the rules,” he added. “You can't have one faction of society weaponizing the power of the state against factions that it doesn't like, and that's what you've seen.”

But mostly, he focused on telling the crowd about his own résumé and campaign promises — much of which focused on culture war efforts. That included his anti-LGBTQ battles against the Walt Disney Co., plus public school policies that he said aren’t book bans despite what his critics say.

“We’ve had major fights to ensure that gender ideology has no place in our schools,” DeSantis said.

He touted his decision to send a plane of undocumented immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, and his push to eliminate anti-racist training programs from public universities. Florida also “chose freedom over Fauci-ism” during the COVID-19 pandemic, DeSantis said. That earned big cheers from the crowd, some of whom wore shirts with slogans such as “Fauci Lied,” a reference to Anthony Fauci, the former public health official who became the face of pandemic-era policies under Trump and Biden.

"In Florida we fought the woke in the schools, we fought the woke in government, and we fought the woke in corporations," he said.

After DeSantis' speech ended with a standing ovation, NC GOP Chairman Michael Whatley told WRAL News he was excited for the crowd to get to do it all again Saturday with Pence and Trump.

"It's a great opportunity for all these candidates to lay out their vision for the country," he said. "And for the people in this room — these are the party leaders, the activists, the grassroots leaders, from all across North Carolina."

Democrats tackle NC

While Republicans gathered in Greensboro, Democratic President Joe Biden went Friday to Rocky Mount and Fayetteville — touting his own plans for the economy, clean energy and improvements for military spouses.

With the four leading presidential candidates all visiting the state in two days, North Carolina is once again front and center for a presidential election.

Biden won the White House in 2020 even while losing North Carolina to Trump. But Trump won North Carolina with just 49% of the vote, and Democrats hope they can continue their momentum and turn the state blue — as an insurance policy in case the eventual Republican presidential nominee manages to flip other swing states that went for Biden in 2020.

"We're here today because we believe in y'all," Biden told students at Nash Community College, where he talked about workforce training efforts, WRAL News reported.

During a conference call with reporters Friday, Anderson Clayton, the chairwoman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, played up Biden’s record while criticizing DeSantis, Pence and Trump as too extreme. She said a win for Republicans would be a defeat for LGBTQ people and she warned that it could also lead to increased abortion restrictions.

“No matter who comes out on top of the GOP primary, any one of them would be a disaster for North Carolinians and a disaster for this country,” Clayton said. “And we're going to do everything in our power to organize against Republican extremism across all 100 counties in North Carolina.”

She said Biden’s visit to the state Friday enabled him to underscore Democrats’ efforts to help working families and to prevent cuts to veterans benefits, Social Security and Medicare.

“This contrast couldn't be more clear,” she said, “and the stakes couldn't be higher right now.”