Florida: Governor Ron Death Sentence
Ron DeSantis (AKA Ron Death Sentence because he let people die from COVID and a hurricane for his own political ambitions) just started his second term as the governor of Florida after modeling himself after Trump throughout his first term. He even ran his first campaign as a tribute to Trump. He presented himself as the ultimate MAGA, dressing his toddlers and baby up in MAGA attire, reading them a MAGA bedtime story and building a wall with them. He’s not the ultimate MAGA because he’s not an idiot. Far from it. He’s well educated and calculating. He has been a Navy JAG lawyer, a special assistant to the US attorney in Florida, and he served 3 terms in the US House of Representatives where he co-founded the Freedom Caucus which tried to overtake the government on January 6 and is currently in control of the Speaker and the House. When he ran for governor the first time 4 years ago he barely won. He got 34,000 more votes than the Democrat. 8.3 million votes were cast. He squeaked out a win but he acted like he won in landslide, just like Trump. He won re-election with 59.4% of the vote, unlike Trump. Florida was the only state that had a red wave. Either Florida has been taken over by MAGAs or something is not right.
DeSantis covered up cases and deaths of COVID and outlawed all protective measures to slow the spread. Florida had the most cases and deaths but DeSantis lied, just like Trump, and said things were under control. At one point, 1 out of 5 cases in the country were in Florida. The Department of Health Inspector General found reasonable cause that employees were directed by DeSantis to lie about COVID data, which caused a “substantial and specific danger to the public’s health.” President Biden threatened to impose travel restrictions on Florida to reduce the spread. DeSantis accused him of trying to “close the Florida border.”
He went to war with the cruise industry during COVID. Florida’s economy is dependent on the tourist industry and he wanted the whole state open for business so he made it a law. He didn’t care how contagious ships were. He made cruise ships let people board whether they were vaccinated or not. Trump wouldn’t let people off ships who had COVID so they couldn’t be counted and DeSantis forced cruise lines to let them on. He went to war with Disney, too, a billion-dollar corporation that employed 77,000 people in his state and generated $5 billion in taxes annually. The company attracts 50 million people to Florida every year who spend a lot of money beyond Disney World while they’re in town. They called DeSantis out for discriminating against the LGBTQ community by passing a law that pushed them out of society, just like Trump did. DeSantis got his revenge, just like Trump did, by using the state legislature to strip Disney away from its special status that they have had since 1967 which allows them to operate like their own city. The Republican party is supposed to be pro-business and pro-limited government but just like Trump, he used the government to get back at his enemy amounting to two counties having to pick up the tab for $163 million that Disney has been spending a year on fire, police, sewage, etc. Property taxes could go up $2,000 a year. They’ll also be stuck with $2 billion in debt for the bonds Disney sold investors plus $1 billion in debt. DeSantis didn’t care. He got even and used Disney to further his own agenda of snuffing out the LGBTQ community. He said, “When you’re trying to impose a woke ideology on our state, we view that as a significant threat. This wokeness will destroy this country if we let it run unabated.”
DeSantis downplayed the destruction of Hurricane Ian and controlled the media so the real numbers and the vastness of the destruction wouldn’t be made public. The media stayed focused on one area in southwest Florida even though there was devastation across the state. The smell of death was everywhere but DeSantis made sure that the data flattered him. The election was about a month away. He created an unnecessary special fund for people to donate to that his wife oversaw. He mentioned it often instead of telling people to donate to the Red Cross. He used an emergency to grift people so they would send a lot of money to a suspicious account controlled by his wife right before his election, just like Trump did.
He partnered with the second most diabolical governor in the country, Greg Abbott of Texas, to exploit immigrants for political gain by trafficking legal asylum seekers from Texas to Florida, then up to Massachusetts where he abandoned them so Fox News could capture it all as a free campaign ad for both DeSantis and Abbott. Get the illegal immigrants! Dump them on the Democrats! He sent the National Guard to the Texas border to keep the invaders out. The DeSantis administration allocated $12 million for relocating migrants to other states as a line item in its budget.
He made up two conspiracies in order to weaponize the government against his own citizens — he made up a voting fraud crisis so he could create a special election fraud crime unit to arrest and intimidate Black people to keep them from voting. He redrew congressional maps so Republicans were guaranteed 20 seats and Democrats would only get 8. He eliminated two Black districts and gerrymandered a district away that was 46% Black, partitioning them off to 4 white districts so they would be left without any representation, putting a Black congressmember out of a job. He created 4 new white districts for Republicans. There were a lot of protests, even within the state capital. Black legislators organized a sit in. The speaker shut down Wi-Fi and kicked out the press so they couldn’t report on it.
The bills that Ron DeSantis signed into law violate civil rights. The Don’t Say Gay bill made it illegal for anybody to mention LGBTQs in school, let alone check out a book that had any gay people in them. Teachers were encouraged to out their students to their parents who might not know their child is gay if they overheard them talking openly about being gay. If teachers were gay, they were told to hide it.
The Stop Woke Act prohibits schools from teaching about race and keeps employers from doing any kind of sensitivity, bias or sexual harassment trainings. He made up critical race theory so he could ban books, bully teachers, and force his right-wing ideology on to the entire population of school children and college students in the state. A federal judge ordered an injunction on the Stop Woke Act so DeSantis hired four outside law firms to fight it, plus some other lawsuits, and defend DeSantis for suspending state attorney Andrew Warren because his didn’t like his politics which violated the Florida Constitution and the First Amendment. He’s using taxpayer funds to fight his personal legal battles in court, just like Trump.
If you vandalize a confederate statue you could go to jail for 15 years.
He signed a near total abortion ban, without exceptions for rape, incest, or human trafficking. He believes women should be punished for seeking abortions, just like Trump.
He outlawed freedom of speech for people he doesn’t like, just like Trump.
He proposed an “anti-mob” extension to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law so gun nuts could shoot people if they suspected them of looting. It would also make protesters who block traffic criminals by charging them with a third-degree felony for partaking in “violent or disorderly assemblies.” Soon after he proposed that, the Cubans took to the streets and he let that go because he wasn’t talking about them, only liberals.
DeSantis equals Trump in the numbers of culture wars that he has started to prove to white supremacists that he hates all of the right people. His motto is, “Florida is the state where ‘woke’ goes to die.”
Trump is mad that DeSantis plans on running against him for president in 2024. He says he’d be nothing without him and has accused him of betraying him. He said, “Ron would not have been governor if it wasn’t for me. Number one, he wouldn’t have gotten the nomination, and number two, he wouldn’t have beaten his Democrat opponent. So then when I hear he might run, I consider that very disloyal.”
Ron DeSantis doesn’t care. This is politics — use and be used. He said, “I roll out of bed, I have people attacking me from all angles……In my case, not only did we win re-election, we won with the highest percentage of the vote than any Republican governor candidate in the history of the state of Florida.” Sounds just like Trump.
Ron DeSantis must be pretty confident that Trump will be in jail when he hits the campaign trail for he fully expects that he’ll get the MAGA hate vote. Either that or the two of them are so narcissistic, delusional, and power crazed that they have finally met their match in each other. If that happens, America is in for another embarrassing assault on democracy. We’ll be punched in the collective gut just as we finally get our balance after being brought to our feet after being knocked out by Trump.
They are both devious as hell, without conscience, and willing to do absolutely anything for power. Except one is way smarter than the other….
