Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis slammed former President Donald Trump during an interview Friday for his handling of the COVID pandemic, saying that Trump’s recent remarks suggest he would do everything the same if he was in the situation again.

DeSantis made the remarks during an interview with Ben Shapiro, editor emeritus of The Daily Wire and host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the top conservative podcast in the nation.

“I think it’s interesting because he’s been attacking me by moving left,” DeSantis said. “So this is a different guy than 2015, 2016. He attacked me for opposing an amnesty bill in the Congress. He did support this amnesty … 2 million illegal aliens he wanted to amnesty. I opposed it, because that’s what America First principles dictate, that you’re opposed to amnesty.”

He said that another key difference was how both men responded to the pandemic.

“He responded by elevating Anthony Fauci and really turning the reins over to Dr. Fauci,” DeSantis said, adding that he “bucked” Fauci “every step of the way, starting in April of 2020, whether it’s the schools, the businesses, the mandates, and our state has never done better as a result.”

“We’re number one for and in migration, number one for growth, and we keep — continue to see great things happen, but it required me to cut against the grain,” DeSantis said. “It required me to know that every decision I made was going to be met with opposition from the media and from the Left. But you do what’s right, and you don’t let them tell you, and so I think Fauci should have been fired. And I think the fact that Donald Trump gave Anthony Fauci a presidential commendation on Trump’s last day in office, that was a gut punch to millions of people around this country who were harmed by Fauci lockdowns.”

Shapiro then noted remarks that Trump has made recently in which he declared that former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo did a better job than DeSantis did in Florida.

“They’re very bizarre,” DeSantis said in responding to the attacks. “I mean, first of all, Florida had less excess mortality than California or New York. Part of that is because states like California had excess mortality derived from the lockdown policies, which is really, really avoidable mortality. But if he thinks Cuomo handled it better, that’s an indication if something like this were to happen again, he would double down and do what he did in March of 2020.”

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DeSantis noted that what Fauci did ultimately set the U.S. on the path to printing more money, which caused inflation to skyrocket. He said that it’s critical that leaders are able to look back at what Fauci did and be able to declare that it was “wrong” and “destructive.”

“So if you could do it again, would he do the same thing? I sure hope not because those were not the right decisions to make,” DeSantis added. “And I’ve said very clearly, if I’m president, if somebody like Fauci is in the government, I will bring them in and I will tell them two things, you’re fired.”

Democrats are growing frustrated with the White House as President Joe Biden appears to be botching negotiation with House Republicans over the debt ceiling.

Negotiators with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and the White House have yet to reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling, though the speaker said on Friday that the two sides had made some progress. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had set a deadline of June 1 to strike a deal before mandatory spending cuts would take effect, but she extended that deadline to June 6 on Friday, giving negotiators a few more days of breathing room.

The White House appears to be failing to make its case to Americans, giving McCarthy an edge in negotiations. A recent Fox News poll of registered voters showed that 47% would blame the president if debt ceiling talks derailed compared to 44% who would blame the GOP. A recent CNN poll found that 60% of Americans believed cuts to spending should be part of a debt ceiling deal.

Democrats are pushing Biden to be more aggressive about making the White House’s case to the public.

“It’s time to bring the president off the bench, or bring somebody off the bench. No one’s responding to anything. Kevin’s consistently on message,” one House Democrat, speaking anonymously, told POLITICO. “We have the Oval Office. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Connecticut Democrat Rep. Rosa DeLauro said Biden has lost the messaging battle to McCarthy. “The scale of the cuts is staggering, which really the public knows very little about,” she told POLITICO of the Republican bill. “The president should be out there.”

The GOP bill passed last month in the House would cap discretionary spending at 2022 levels and limit spending increases to 1% a year for the next decade.

Biden is also facing backlash from progressives who say the president should not be involved in negotiations at all. A group of progressive lawmakers are pushing the president to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling using the 14th Amendment, a legally dubious strategy that would almost certainly face a court challenge.

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“I’m very frustrated. You know, I called on the president to invoke the 14th Amendment and mint a coin and do not negotiate with hostage takers,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) told CNN on Thursday. “I mean, we don’t negotiate with terrorists globally. Why are we going to negotiate with the economic terrorists here that are the Republican Party?”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the Progressive Caucus chair, said a “bad deal” cut with Republicans could impact Biden’s reelection chances.

“The president — I’m sure he’s thinking about the fact that it was a very vibrant, diverse coalition that put them in the White House, and he’s going to need that vibrant, diverse coalition again for 2024,” she said.