Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded to a critique from Republican primary rival Sen. Tim Scott (SC) on Friday over Florida’s newly approved curriculum for black history, explaining that his administration will continue to debunk the lies perpetrated by the left.

“Part of the reason our country has struggled is because D.C. Republicans all too often accept false narratives, accept lies that are perpetrated by the left,” DeSantis said.

“And to accept the lie that Kamala Harris has been perpetrating, even when that has been debunked, that’s not the way you do it. The way you lead is to fight back against the lies, is to speak the truth,” the presidential hopeful continued.

“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,” he added.

DeSantis’s remark followed Scott’s criticism of the DeSantis administration’s new black history program’s standards, which include instruction on how slaves “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

“As a country founded upon freedom, the greatest deprivation of freedom was slavery,” Scott told a reporter following a forum with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R).

“There is no silver lining…in slavery,” he said, adding that slavery was about “separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives.”

“It was just devastating. So I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that. “People have bad days. Sometimes they regret what they say. And we should ask them again to clarify their positions,” Scott said of DeSantis.

This is not the first time DeSantis has defended the updated curriculum, as he told a reporter last week that while he did not develop the new program, he stands by that it is “factual.”

“I didn’t do it, and I wasn’t involved in it,” he said, continuing:

But I think what they’re doing is, I think, that they’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith, into doing things later in life. They listed everything out. And if you have any questions about it, just ask the Department of Education. You can talk about those folks. But, I mean, these were scholars who put that together. It was not anything that was done politically.

Florida Department of Education (FDOE) Commissioner Manny Diaz has also defended the curriculum, asserting that the “federal government won’t dictate Florida’s education standards” and sharing a letter affirming that the state will implement the standards “swiftly, transparently, and honestly.”

The back and forth between the two comes as DeSantis continues to struggle in the polls, falling to third place in South Carolina and reaching a weekly tracking low in Morning Consult’s weekly survey.