DeSantis Speaks After Second Place Finish in Iowa Transcript

"Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Well, thank you. Thanks so much. They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us.

We love you too. They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us. They spent almost $50 million attacking us. No one's faced that much all the way just through Iowa. The media was against us. They were writing our obituary months ago. They even called the election before people even got a chance to vote. But they were just so excited about the fact that they were predicting that we wouldn't be able to get our ticket punched here out of Iowa. But I can tell you because of your support, in spite of all of that, that they threw at us, everyone against us. We've got our ticket punched out of Iowa.

And what I learned by going around Iowa is that this country has a basic decency. We've got hard-working people, God-fearing people, patriotic people. You just don't see it every day because of all the nonsense that gets spewed out there by the media, by social media, all this other stuff. People want to have hope for this country's future. And that's what we represent. We represent a chance to reverse the madness that we've seen in this country, to reverse the decline of this country and to give this country a new birth of freedom and a restoration of sanity. That's what we are going to do.

So we have our marching orders. Our marching orders are to do all we can to preserve what George Washington called the sacred fire of Liberty. The same fire that burned in Philadelphia in 1776 when our founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, the same sacred fire of liberty that burned at a cemetery in Gettysburg when our first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln pledged our nation to a new birth of freedom. The same sacred fire of liberty that was on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 when our Band of Brothers stormed those shores and helped free the world. The same sacred fire of liberty that was at the Berlin Wall in 1987 when Ronald Reagan stood there and said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

This is our responsibility to carry this torch and to preserve this sacred fire of liberty. Don't run away from this responsibility. We welcome this responsibility. We thank you for your effort. We thank you for your support. You helped us get a ticket punched out of the Hawkeye State. We have a lot of work to do, but I can tell you this as the next President of the United States, I am going to get the job done for this country. I am not going to make any excuses and I guarantee you this. I will not let you down. Thank you all. God bless you."

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