Pro-DeSantis PAC hits Trump after CNN town hall: ‘Nonsense’

A super PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ widely expected 2024 presidential run bashed former President Donald Trump for his performance at a CNN town hall Wednesday night, saying the 45th president was “stuck in the past.”

“On the same day Ron DeSantis was assailing Joe Biden’s border crisis, Donald Trump was on CNN attacking DeSantis and lying about finishing the border wall,” Erin Perrine, communications director for Never Back Down, said in a statement.

“The CNN town hall was, as expected, over an hour of nonsense that proved Trump is stuck in the past. After 76 years, Trump still doesn’t know where he stands on important conservative issues like supporting life and the 2nd Amendment. How does that Make America Great Again?”

Chris Jankowski, Never Back Down’s CEO, went after both Trump and CNN in a separate statement.

“The Trump town hall on CNN is a true marriage of equals: A candidate who has lost his luster appearing on a network that’s lost its ratings. Both ignore a key fact: 2024 isn’t 2016. The old gimmicks and tired lines don’t work anymore,” Janowski said.

“We’d expect this kind of thing out of CNN — but it’s stunning to see Donald Trump transform into a made-for-CNN candidate, desperately seeking a national town hall, the most elite of elite forums. After all, in 2016, it was Donald Trump who electroshocked the Republican Party out of its elitism.”

The 76-year-old former president said the Biden administration was preparing for a “day of infamy” on Thursday with the end of Title 42 — and refused to rule out instituting a policy to separate families at the border.

“You’re gonna have tens of thousands of people pouring into our country,” he said. 

The Trump campaign put out a statement blasting President Biden for the state of the nation: “Joe Biden has turned everything into a disaster: inflation, the economy, the border, crime, energy, China, Russia and wokeness in schools.”

Trump also criticized DeSantis over his ongoing legal battle with Disney, saying the Florida governor “ought to just relax and take it easy and think about the future, because right now his future is not looking so good.”

The former president’s appearance on CNN was the first since his 2016 election, as anchor Kaitlin Collins questioned him about past statements on the 2020 election, the 2021 Capitol riot, his verdict in a sexual abuse and defamation civil case brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and the war in Ukraine.

Trump blamed the Capitol riot on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser, telling the audience he offered the Democratic leaders “10,000 soldiers” to guard Congress that day.

The ex-commander-in-chief insisted to Collins he does not know Carroll and denied her accusations. He also declined to say whether he was rooting for Ukraine or Russia to win their war, but pledged to end the conflict in one day if he was elected.

DeSantis is expected to launch his presidential exploratory committee within weeks, according to reports. In April, he left Florida for trips to Japan, South Korea, Israel and the UK in an effort to burnish his foreign policy standing.

A new WPA Intelligence poll shared Wednesday by CEO Chris Wilson, who is head of data for Never Back Down, found Trump’s candidacy would hurt Republicans in competitive seats for 2024, potentially costing the party control of the House and keeping it in the minority in the Senate.