One of my mentors, Martha Barnett, was the lead counsel and the former president of the American Bar Association.ĭeSantis has been a George Wallace-like figure trying to undo voting rights and the balanced teaching of race, history and civil rights in America. An entire peaceful Black community was wiped out and murdered by a band of white racists who burned their community down, buried their bodies and covered it up for decades-until history came calling, and my former law firm, Holland & Knight LLP, took up the case and won reparations for the victims. He positions himself as a champion of freedom and individual liberties, while all the while he’s suppressing them.īut to me, what makes DeSantis the most dangerous is that, in a state like Florida, where an evil horror like the Rosewood massacre took place in 1923, he lacks any understanding of that history and its Jim Crow vestiges in his own state. Why? Because, unlike Trump, he doesn’t really engage in the hyperbolic insults, offensive racial talk and animus that Trump does. This was a response from a spokesperson for the chief executive of a state, which has a very large Jewish population. Her point was to compare these horrid creatures openly spewing hateful rhetoric at Jews to what the Lincoln Project did this past fall in Virginia at a rally for then-gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin-where they posed as neo-Nazis from the Charlottesville, Va., “Unite the Right” rally in 2017. DeSantis tweeted this: “Do we even know they are Nazis?” Christina Pushaw wrote in a now-deleted tweet, according to. Rick Scott condemned the disgusting display of hatred toward Jews in Florida, the press secretary for Gov. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to the president, by selling “ Don’t Fauci My Florida” merch and “ Freedom Over Fauci” flip-flops.Īnother scary example of how out of control DeSantis and his Florida team of Republicans are was the reactions to the neo-Nazi rally that happened this past weekend. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)ĭeSantis has embraced the phrase “Let’s go Brandon”-a euphemism for a vulgar attack on President Biden. Ron DeSantis looks on during the third round of the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club on Apin Augusta, Georgia. Let’s start with this most recent factoid: Just this past month, Florida legislators introduced a bill that would protect white citizens from feeling discomfort with teachings about America’s racial past.įlorida Gov. So let me break down some of the more concerning facts about this GOP rising star and why it should scare the hell out of us all. DeSantis sounds a lot like someone else we know who lives in Florida-“the former guy” as he is now referred to on social media (“TFG,” aka Donald Trump). He’s has called teaching about the impact of race in American history “ crap.” And he carps on and on about protecting freedoms and rights by attacking science, mask-wearing and vaccines as Florida has surged with COVID cases, hospitalizations and tragically, deaths. He is the new darling of the conservative right. ![]() Yet, this man is the most likely 2024 Republican nominee, in my opinion. But worse than the state itself is its young Yale and Harvard Law-educated governor, Ron DeSantis.įlorida’s governor has been on the proverbial warpath against, well, everything. Florida is off the chain: neo-Nazi rallies, anti-CRT sentiments, debates on banning books, bans on vaccines and mask mandates and attacks on voting rights and fair elections. But it is one for which I have been desperately searching for answers. I know I am asking a rather loaded question. OPINION: Florida’s governor, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, has been on a proverbial warpath against everything-from banning mask and vaccine mandates and the teaching of critical race theory to suppressing voting rights.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |