Governor DeSantis is firing back at Senator Scott after his rival for the GOP presidential nomination criticized his administration’s new educational guidelines that describe the “personal benefit” slaves reaped from slavery.

Mr. DeSantis and his campaign have been roiled by criticism of Florida’s new educational guidelines on slavery, which state that “instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”  

Now, Mr. Scott, the sole Black Republican in the Senate and the only Black Republican running for president, tells Politico that “there’s no silver lining to slavery.”

“Slavery was really about separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was devastating,” Mr. Scott said. “I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that. And listen: People have bad days. Sometimes, they regret what they say. And we should ask them again to clarify their positions.”

Mr. DeSantis responded to Mr. Scott, telling reporters in Iowa that he was accepting “lies” that are “perpetrated by the left.” He and his supporters have argued that Democrats, and in particular Vice President Harris, are distorting and cherry-picking from the educational guidelines to make misleading claims.

“Part of the reason our country has struggled is because D.C. Republicans all too often accept false narratives, accept the lies that are perpetrated by the left,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And to, you know, accept the lie that Kamala Harris has been perpetrating, even when that has been debunked, that’s not the way you do it.”

Mr. Scott is not the only Black Republican to criticize Mr. DeSantis for Florida’s new standards, with Congressman Byron Donalds, a prominent member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, also criticizing the language Wednesday.

“The attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is wrong and needs to be adjusted,” Mr. Donalds said, adding that he believes that Mr. DeSantis’s administration “will correct this.”  

Staffers at Mr. DeSantis’s education department responded to Mr. Donalds’s criticism by questioning his commitment to conservatism. 

“We will not back down from teaching our nation’s true history at the behest of a woke White House, nor at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman,” the department’s commissioner, Manny Diaz, said.

Ms. Harris has seized on the issue, making an impromptu trip to Florida, where she denounced Mr. DeSantis. The governor, in turn, told Politico that people had to choose between siding with “Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets” or with Florida.

Mr. DeSantis has also defended the standards, saying, “I think that they’re probably going to show — some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.”

The sparring between Messrs. Scott and DeSantis comes after Mr. DeSantis’s campaign leaked a memo detailing plans to single out Mr. Scott for criticism in the GOP field.

“While Tim Scott has earned a serious look at this stage, his bio is lacking the fight that our electorate is looking for in the next President,” the memo reads. “We expect Tim Scott to receive appropriate scrutiny in the weeks ahead.”

Since the memo was leaked, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has fallen further in the polls while Mr. Scott has enjoyed a relative bump, both in polling and in support from major GOP donors.

Attacking Mr. Scott, who Mr. DeSantis’s campaign assesses as the only viable candidate beside himself to best President Trump in the quest for the nomination, is part of the struggling campaign’s attempt at a reset.

Alongside attacking Mr. Scott, the reset includes a new slate of nationally focused talking points and the firing of about a third of his campaign staff, including a longtime aide and top speechwriter who had reportedly secretly made a pro-DeSantis video that included a sonnenrad, an ancient European symbol that has been used by modern-day white supremacists including the Nazis, and tried to pass it off as an anonymously produced viral video.

Some within the Florida education department have also come to Mr. DeSantis’s defense on the standards, including the communications director, Alex Lanfranconi, who pointed out that some curricula taught in other states address how some former slaves made a living after being freed, if they were.

“The AP course supported by the NAACP, teachers’ unions and White House includes nearly IDENTICAL language about the skills learned by slaves,” Mr. Lanfranconi said. “Something tells me this conspiracy theory about Florida’s new African American History standards is about to go away.”

The Advanced Placement African American Studies course, which Mr. DeSantis had railed against earlier this year, does describe how enslaved Black Americans developed skills that, if they were ever freed, could be used “to provide for themselves and others.”

The course does not, however, claim, as the Florida guidelines do, that the enslaved people reaped “personal benefit” from skills developed as a result of their forced labor.