Florida Governor Ron DeSantis delivered a rousing message during a speech in Michigan Thursday morning about the importance of Republicans getting rid of a culture of losing that he says the party has experienced in recent years.

DeSantis made the remarks while appearing at the Midland County Republican Party’s annual Dave Camp Spring Breakfast at the Great Hall Banquet Center in Midland. More than 600 people gathered for the event.

“In this endeavor, there is no substitute for victory,” DeSantis declared. “And what I see around the country with Republicans is they’ve started to develop a culture of losing.”

The governor highlighted this week’s news that a leftist candidate won an important seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and last year’s midterm elections as recent examples of Republicans not taking elections seriously enough.

“In Florida, we have a culture of winning, we have a culture of execution, and we have a culture of delivering results,” DeSantis said. “And you need to be able to win. It’s not easy. When you stand for the right things in this day and age, man, you are going to have a lot of blowback. Leadership isn’t cost free.”

“You got to have the courage of your convictions,” he added. “And you got to understand that whether it’s a governor, whether it’s a mother going into a school board meeting to protest some of the insanity, they’re gonna come at you, and you’re gonna have to make some sacrifices. But you know, I think it’s worth making those sacrifices, lord knows people have made much bigger sacrifices in the history of our country so that we could be free.”

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WATCH:

💯 DESANTIS: “What I see around the country with Republicans is they’ve started to develop a culture of LOSING…In Florida, we have a culture of WINNING. We have a culture of EXECUTION and we have a culture of DELIVERING RESULTS.” pic.twitter.com/Iqp4ENGlPq

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) April 6, 2023

Author and Daily Wire host Candace Owens fired back at a well-known interior designer who attempted to smear her in the media after he was outed for a nasty message he directed at Owens and her husband for merely inquiring about his services.

Owens’ husband George Farmer asked interior designer and Town & Country contributing editor David Netto via his website about possibly acquiring his services after the couple saw his work in a Nashville home. Netto responded by saying he’d “rather get beat in the a** with a wooden plank than ever go near either of you.”

When Netto was asked about the exchange by Vanity Fair, he suggested Owens and Farmer had ties to January 6, seemingly justifying his response.

“He’s fundamentally lying,” Owens told The Daily Wire about Netto. “I think he kind of got caught with his pants down to Vanity Fair. I think that he’s quite embarrassed about his nastiness being made public.”

“After January 6, the joke’s over. People like this should expect to be recognized as complicit with something very dangerous — and I don’t mean Kanye — and expect to be told off in polite society,” Netto told Vanity Fair about Owens and Farmer. “Without Parler the Proud Boys couldn’t talk to each other, so that’s enough for me.”

The BLEXIT founder noted that she was nine-months pregnant on January 6, 2021, and her husband was not running the social media platform Parler at the time of the Capitol breach, contrary to Netto’s suggestion. “This is all easily searchable on Google,” Owens told The Daily Wire.

Via a message to Netto on social media sent in response to the apparent smear in Vanity Fair, Owens informed the interior designer that he is spreading falsehoods about her family.

“I’ve been asked to comment in a few articles on your email to me and my husband and I wanted to personally let you know that my husband is an immigrant and was not even allowed to work in the United States at the time of January 6th,” she wrote to Netto. “I was also 9 months pregnant at that time and was nowhere near the capitol. The insinuation that we were involved in terrorism is just such a lie.”

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“The CEO of Parler at that time was a man by the name of John Matze,” Owens continued. “I would like to believe that you said this because you were genuinely misinformed and not trying to maliciously spread lies about me and my husband. So I thought I’d properly inform you first before I commented further.”

The Daily Wire reached out to Netto for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.

Owens said that when she and her husband received Netto’s response, they “wrote him an email back and just said thank you for considering us,” adding, “We were not going to return the nastiness.”

But the interaction did raise a question in Owens’ mind.

“This does call into question the Left’s position that you ‘have to bake the cake,’” she highlighted, referring to recent legal targeting of conservative Christians who refuse to participate in, for example, same-sex wedding ceremonies.

“That’s the big thing,” the “Blackout” author emphasized. “We said, ‘fine,’ because I don’t believe people should be forced to serve people they fundamentally disagree with.”

The Daily Wire asked Netto his position on the issue, but did not receive an immediate response.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Owens also made the point that, by liberal standards, Netto’s response to her would have generated major waves in the media. Owens, however, is a black woman who is conservative, not liberal, so she doesn’t fit the bill.

“If a white conservative male had written that email to an outspoken black liberal, he would’ve lost everything,” she said. “They would’ve said it was like Jim Crow.”

Netto has insisted his response to Owens and Farmer was not about race.