Exclusive – Rep. Gooden: DeSantis Is 'Not Quite Ready' for the Presidency

Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) took Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday inside his decision to endorse former President Donald Trump for the Republican nomination over Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who Gooden said is “not quite ready to be in Washington and in the presidency.”

Gooden endorsed Trump a few weeks back, shortly after leaving a private meeting with DeSantis and other congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill. Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle asked Gooden to recount his decision to endorse Trump following the meeting.

“In my heart, I thought I would probably eventually be on board with the Trump team, but I wanted to do my due diligence first and be able to actually honestly say that I had vetted the candidates, the serious candidates,” he said. “And I spoke with DeSantis. He was a nice guy, but I realized he’s not quite ready to be in Washington and in the presidency. I think he’s done a decent job as governor and should probably finish out his term and focus on that.”

“But we just can’t afford someone coming to the White House that doesn’t have experience and doesn’t know what they’re doing in the situation they’re in, and when we have an option, and that option is Donald Trump, that has the experience that knows how to defeat these people — and by people, I mean, the Democrats who are seeking to destroy our nation — it just seems crazy to me that we wouldn’t rally behind him and support his campaign, and so that’s what I’m doing,” he added.

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The meeting came days before Trump officially secured the support of the majority of Florida’s congressional delegation — a less-than-ideal scenario for DeSantis. In making the decision, Gooden noted that he consulted with his Florida colleagues “about the differences between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.”

“The almost unanimous position of my colleagues from Florida in Congress are that Ron DeSantis is just not quite ready for the job, and Donald Trump is not only ready for the job, he’s done the job. He has the operation in place to win the campaign to defeat Joe Biden and to immediately hit the ground running. So that means a lot,” Gooden explained.

“So one, we believe in Donald Trump as the best candidate and our best choice for president. Two, we believe he’s going to win, and three, none of us want to spend the next eight months watching Republicans beat up on each other. We want to focus on the general,” he added. “Unfortunately, I suspect we’ll all get to see Republicans beat up on each other, but those of us in Congress that have endorsed Donald Trump, we want to do everything we can to help him get this nomination squared away and focus on the general election so we can hit the ground running come January of 2025.”

Gooden believes that Trump will score more key congressional endorsements as time progresses.

He also shared what he sees as a path to victory for Trump against President Joe Biden, with independents making the key difference in a general election.

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“I believe some of the independent voters who seem to just kind of go whichever way the wind’s blowing at election time, I believe that they will turn away from Joe Biden, especially after the disaster that his presidency has been,” he explained. “And I believe that they’ll come back to Donald Trump. I believe that life will be good again in this country; we will have a secure border, we will feel safe in our large cities. The police will be respected and admired like they were when Donald Trump was President, our retirement portfolios will be healthy again, and the world will be a safer and more secure place.”