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Florida Governor and 2024 Republican Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis slammed former President Donald Trump for vowing over the weekend to build a “new and spectacular building” for the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).
On Saturday, Trump pledged to keep the FBI headquarters in D.C. but also to build a “new and spectacular building” for the agency, The Blaze reported last week.
The FBI Headquarters should not be moved to a far away location, but should stay right where it is, in a new and spectacular building, in the best location in our now crime ridden and filthy dirty, graffiti scarred, Capital. They should be involved in bringing back D.C., not running away from it, especially the violent crime. An important part of my platform for President is to bring back, restore, and rebuild Washington, D.C., into the “crown jewel” of our Nation. We will make it crime free and GREAT AGAIN. The FBI should not be fleeing for safer, yet much less convenient, environs. It should make where they are now the safest place on earth! DON’T MOVE THE FBI!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
DeSantis slammed the statement during a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire and criticized the former President for not following through with his pledge to drain the swamp.
Donald Trump failed to drain the swamp, so perhaps it is not surprising that he is seeking to deepen the swamp by building a massive new FBI building in D.C.,” DeSantis responded on X, formerly Twitter. “Actually draining swamp requires taking power out of D.C., not cementing power inside D.C.”
“NO! That’s part of the problem with the FBI. They’ve become overrun with D.C. politics — you need to take it out of D.C. Take power out of there – that’s how you drain the swamp,” DeSantis declared.
“I’m taking power out of D.C., you’re going to have a reduction in the size of government, but also in the scope of government,” DeSantis said.
Earlier this year, DeSantis pledged to slash the size of federal agencies by half, as well as relocating federal agencies outside of D.C. to counter the “accumulation of power”.
“Too much power has accumulated in D.C. and the result is a detached administrative state that rules over us and imposes its will on us,” DeSantis said in an interview with the New York Post. “While there are a host of things that need to be done to re-constitutionalize government, parceling out federal agencies to other parts of the country could help reduce the negative effects of this accumulation of power.”
“Some of that will be reduction through attrition as people retire, some of that will be transferring to other parts of the country getting them out of D.C.,” DeSantis told CNBC host Brian Sullivan on “Last Call.” “Some of it will involve layoffs and using Article II power to do it.”
“But the agencies in our government have grown 50 percent since 2019,” the Republican governor explained. “If you look at their funding levels, I don’t think there’s any American that thinks they’re 50 percent better off for those agencies having grown by 50 percent.”
DeSantis isn’t the only one to slam Trump’s statement.
Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy also slammed the statement and once again pledged to shut down the FBI if he were elected.
“The FBI can’t be “reformed.” The right answer is: Shut It Down. Yes, the President can do it. I will,” Ramaswamy tweeted.
This isn’t the first time Trump has pledged to have a new building for the FBI.
In 2017 under the Trump administration, the General Services Administration scrapped plans for a new building for the FBI, blaming congress for only appropriating $523 million of the $1.4 billion the Obama administration requested for the project in 2016, NPR reported.