Ron DeSantis clapped back on Friday at one of his top rivals in the Republican presidential primaries, Tim Scott, after the South Carolina senator criticized the Florida governor's education reforms.
Scott called out DeSantis on Thursday in response to Florida's new standards for African American history, which contain a benchmark clarification that reads, "Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."
"What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans, and even raping their wives. It was just devastating," Scott said. "So I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that."
But DeSantis, while in rural Iowa, accused Scott of joining his fellow moderate Republicans in the upper chamber by "all too often" accepting the left's "false narratives" and "lies."
"The way you lead is to fight back against the lies is to speak the truth," DeSantis said. "So, I'm here defending my state of Florida against false accusations and against lies, and we're going to continue to speak the truth."
DeSantis' campaign has accused the media of nitpicking the standards, pointing to an earlier Advanced Placement course on African American studies rejected by the state for being too woke that had the same required course content.
Florida Education Department spokesman Alex Lanfranconi said the new standards resulted from a "rigorous process" that incorporated "all components of African American History: the good, the bad and the ugly."
Florida is 1 of 12 states that requires the teaching of African American history. The others are New York, Washington, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Colorado, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Illinois.
DeSantis and Scott have attempted to appeal to the same donor cohort, with the South Carolina lawmaker seeing an opening due to DeSantis' dwindling poll numbers, Politico reported.
While the Florida governor dropped from within four points of former President Donald Trump in February to nearly 37 points behind, Scott has remained at around 3% since his announcement.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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