Ron DeSantis thanks Liberty students for praying for First Lady’s healing from cancer

Gov. Ron DeSantis made a canonical stop on the GOP Presidential Primary trail, delivering a stump speech at Liberty University, albeit with a special message of gratitude.

The Governor began his remarks expressing gratitude for students at the evangelical school in Lynchburg, Virginia who offered their prayers.

“I would like to thank so many of you for thinking and praying about my family when my wife, Casey, Florida’s First Lady, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021,” DeSantis said.

The Governor announced that Mrs. DeSantis was “cancer free” last year, a heartening declaration after months of uncertainty about her health. During that announcement, he likewise expressed gratitude for “thoughts and prayers” for her healing.

“And I can tell you this: when we got the news and we were talking about it as a family deciding whether this would be something that we would make public in those days and maybe even a week where it was private, it was tough. You didn’t know what was going to happen,” DeSantis added.

“You have a mother of three very young children and you see that life can be very fragile. But I’ll tell you this: when we put out this statement letting folks know that this is something she was going to have to fight, the prayers that we received as a result of that lifted up her spirit.”

“She was able to go through a lot of excruciating treatment and surgery,” DeSantis added. “And I can tell you right now she’s never been healthier, never been better. The prayers have been answered.”

The DeSantis family struggled with making her condition public, and Democratic critics played politics with some of the treatment period, including wondering why the Governor was out of the public eye late last year on at least one day he was with his wife. He spoke of that incident last year

“A lot of these people, some in the media, but a lot of these politicians who you know are trying to get some traction, they said, ‘Oh, he’s out vacationing’ and all this stuff. It turns out we were down in Tampa doing this treatment and it’s not easy to go through for her and it’s certainly not fun to watch somebody have to go through that, to watch your spouse go through that,” DeSantis said.

The First Lady has been unabashed in her appreciation for the Governor standing by her during her illness, including by cutting a memorable ad last October explaining that the man who stood by her during her recovery is “who he is.”