“This woke mind virus will destroy this country,” he told about 70 people gathered at Olde Boston’s Restaurant & Pub.

“We have not only fought the woke, we have beat the woke on issue after issue,” he said.

During his morning speech in Fort Dodge, DeSantis described woke ideology as a rejection of the truth. He said it will cause American students to “become dumber” and families to be far less safe.

DeSantis is seeking the Republican nomination for president in a crowded field that includes former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott and former United Nations Ambassador Niki Haley.

- Messenger photo by Bill Shea
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, center, speaks with Jim Oberhelman, the chairman of the Webster County Republican Party, Friday morning at Olde Boston's Restaurant & Pub. DeSantis made a campaign appearance there as he seeks the Republican nomination for president.

DeSantis, a Navy veteran, said on his first day in the White House he will “rip out all the woke and social experimentation” from the military and return it to its mission of defending the country.

“People are not going to want to mess with the United States of America when I’m president,” he said.

That’s not all that DeSantis pledged to do on his first day in office. To rousing applause, he declared that he would “bring the issue of our southern border to a conclusion.”

He said that on his first day in the White House he will declare the southern border a national emergency and deploy the military to guard it.

“We’ll go down and stop the invasion cold,” he said.

He said he heard of an incident in which drug runners cut a hole in the border wall. He said if they do that while he is president they will “end up stone cold dead.”

The final additional action he promised for his first day in office was the appointment of a new director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Current FBI Director Christopher Wray has been a lightning rod for Republican criticism. DeSantis did not talk specifically about Wray.

He also promised retribution against the federal officials who managed the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are going to usher in a reckoning for the people who perpetrated the lockdown policies,” he said. “We can never let that happen in our country ever, ever again.”

DeSantis described the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “total, total cesspools.”