Chip Roy: Trump ‘hangs out in his basement in Florida, afraid to actually debate’

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) on Tuesday slammed former President Trump for opting out of GOP presidential primary debates and accused him of being “afraid” to be challenged on his presidential record.

“I was just at multiple events with [Florida Gov.] Ron DeSantis, where he’s shaking their hands and looking them in the eye, while Donald Trump hangs out in his basement in Florida, afraid to actually debate,” Roy said in an interview on CNN’s “The Source,” nodding to Trump’s 2020 line of attack against then-candidate Joe Biden, in which he claimed Biden was running his campaign from his basement.

“What’s he afraid of? You know, look, I’m happy to debate him if he wants to anywhere. I’m just a little old congressman. Why won’t he debate Ron DeSantis or any of the other candidates? I think he should,” said Roy, a supporter of DeSantis, a 2024 GOP presidential candidate.

Pressed on why Trump doesn’t want to debate DeSantis, Roy praised the job DeSantis has done as governor of Florida, sharply criticized Trump for racking up trillions of dollars in debt and slammed Trump for failing to “actually fully secure the border.”

“If we’d gotten the policies in place, if he had worked with conservatives to get bills passed in 2018, ’19,” Roy said of Trump. “We wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in right now, where Joe Biden is leaving Texas fully exposed to have people running over our Border Patrol agents and our [Department of Public Safety].”

“President Trump could have done that, if he would have led Congress to get something done. That didn’t happen. I don’t think he wants to debate that record. I don’t think he wants to go, you know, through every single issue that he’s been a part of. And he knows that Governor DeSantis has done a phenomenal job in Florida. So, you know, he doesn’t show up for the debates,” Roy said.

Roy was also pressed a couple of times about Trump’s recent controversial remarks that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of America, and he said Republicans ought to be approaching the issue with more compassion.

“I think Republicans generally — whether it’s Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump or anybody else — we should be talking about this in terms of what it means to humanity. I don’t think we should be talking about, you know, this issue from a perspective of, you know, ‘blood’ or whatever the President said, what I think we should be saying is, is that there are human beings who are suffering,” Roy said.