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DeSantis Makes Major Change in Narrative Just Days Apart

The likely presidential candidate is reacting to a headline from earlier this week.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is going to run for President in 2024.  You didn’t hear it here first.  We all know it, and he knows we know it, and he’s just waiting until the last possible minute to slink into the race, hoping that some combination of DOJ/Manhattan/Atlanta takes down Donald Trump before he has to spend any money doing so.

Heck, even Trump folks know it.  That’s why a Super PAC backing the former President has taken legal action against DeSantis, claiming that the Sunshine State lawmaker is running afoul of campaign finance regulations with a “shadow campaign”.

DeSantis’ tardy announcement has gifted the Florida Governor some time to massage his message, however, and DeSantis’ latest change of narrative is not going unnoticed.

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis has branded Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and demanded he be “held accountable” for his barbaric invasion of Ukraine.

Taking a tougher tone from his statement last week appearing to dismiss the year-long war as a “territorial dispute,” DeSantis now says Russia was WRONG to invade Ukraine and was WRONG to invade and take over Crimea in 2014, and won’t win the war.

And he’s made his strongest attack yet on Russia’s dictator, calling him a loser who is “basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons.”

DeSantis’ remarkably soft tone on Ukraine earlier in the week made headlines, and so the Florida leader made sure that his corrective tone was heard far and wide.

DeSantis made the new comments in a wide-ranging TV interview for … “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” which airs on Fox Nation tomorrow and has already made headlines for his attack on potential Republican nominee Donald Trump.

His assertion, in a statement to Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, that it is not in America’s “vital national interests” to become “further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” was strongly criticized by numerous senior Republicans — including Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Marco Rubio.

When … asked … specifically if he regretted using the phrase “territorial dispute,” DeSantis replied, “Well, I think it’s been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded (last year) — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong.

And then:

“What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting and that’s what I was referring to and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it, but I think the larger point is, okay, Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO. That’s a good thing. I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified (in invading) – that’s nonsense.”

DeSantis has consistently polled as the number two choice among Republicans for the 2024 presidential nomination, but Donald Trump’s recent rise in popularity among GOP voters could put him out of reach…unless of course DeSantis abandons his reluctance – and in a hurry.

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