Former President Donald Trump's campaign team on Thursday night issued a lengthy rebuttal to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' immigration claims made during his official campaign launch on Twitter.
Among the major attacks on DeSantis from the Trump campaign is that DeSantis, as a member of Congress, voted for the exact DACA bill for which he is now attacking Trump.
DeSantis attacked Trump's immigration record on Wednesday, saying: "I thought it was supposed to be America First policy to oppose amnesty, and yet he endorsed and tried to ram through an amnesty."
But on June 23, 2018, then-Rep. DeSantis said: "We voted on a bill which is exactly what President Trump promised and what most of us who ran promised. It got 193 votes. No Democrat voted for it. We had 40 Republicans vote against it.
"It was the only bill I have seen since I had been in Congress that would actually solve the problem of illegal immigration … It did everything we've promised, and yet, you couldn't even get all the Republicans to stand with President Trump and pass that."
According to the Trump campaign, on June 21, 2018, DeSantis voted in favor of H.R. 4760, the "Securing America's Future Act of 2018" bill that was sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
"After President Trump kept his promise to repeal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the most conservative members of Congress proposed H.R. 4760 to leverage the expiration of Barack Obama's unlawful executive amnesty program to force Democrats to effectively repeal Ted Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act," the campaign said.
"The 2018 Goodlatte bill would have given status to certain minors in exchange for ending chain migration forever and terminating the vote machine that the globalists used to turn the United States into a Democrat stronghold. The legislation was rejected by the Democrat Congress."
But on June 14, 2018, DeSantis told Fox News: "The Goodlatte bill has what we campaigned on. The Goodlatte bill and chain migration … We need to defund sanctuary cities. We need E-Verify. We need to end chain migration, get rid of the diversity visa lottery … Make people go on record for that."
DeSantis then voted against the second version of the bill, after Trump said it would not clear the 60-vote Senate threshold.
On June 21, 2018, President Trump tweeted, "You cannot pass legislation on immigration whether it be for safety and security or any other reason including "heart," without getting Dem votes. Problem is, they don't care about security and R's do. Zero Dems voted to support the Goodlatte Bill. They won't vote for anything!"
On June 30, 2018, President Trump tweeted, "I never pushed the Republicans in the House to vote for the Immigration Bill, either GOODLATTE 1 or 2, because it could never have gotten enough Democrats as long as there is the 60 vote threshold. I released many prior to the vote knowing we need more Republicans to win in Nov."
But, the Trump campaign says, DeSantis now calls the DACA bill he voted for a "pittance," though he previously described it as doing "everything we've promised."
On June 23, 2018, DeSantis praised the legislation: "We voted on a bill which is exactly what President Trump promised and what most of us who ran promised. It got 193 votes. No Democrat voted for it. We had 40 Republicans vote against it. It was the only bill I have seen since I had been in Congress that would actually solve the problem of illegal immigration.
"It authorized Trump's wall. It had E-Verify so that you have to check to make sure people are legally here. It defunded sanctuary cities. It changed these asylum laws which are inviting a lot of the stuff we're seeing at the border now… It ended chain migration. It ended the diversity lottery. It did everything we've promised, and yet you couldn't even get all the Republicans to stand with President Trump and pass that."
According to the Trump campaign, DeSantis is "shamelessly copying" Trump's "incredibly successful America First immigration and border security agenda."
"President Trump implemented 'Remain in Mexico,' which DeSantis cited last night as his own top immigration priority," the campaign said, noting that Trump built over 400 miles of the world's "most robust and advanced border wall, which DeSantis claims as his own border security initiative."
DeSantis recently piggybacked off Trump's nationwide policy of ending "catch and release," the statement said, adding that under Trump, the United States entered a historic partnership with the Mexican government to deploy tens of thousands of Mexican soldiers to secure their side of the border and that Trump ordered nearly 5,000 troops to the southern border.
"DeSantis, again, is taking cues from President Trump, but is instead making Floridians foot the bill," the statement said.