Two months after a West Virginia man pleaded guilty to violating federal laws against threatening the life of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has called on carrying on the seditious plot.
At a campaign stop Wednesday, celebrating his impressive primary win against nobody, DeSantis embraced Thomas Patrick Connally’s characterization of Dr. Anthony Fauci as a “disgusting little elf,” and proposed that “Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac.” Connolly pleaded guilty in May when he instead proposed to either shoot Fauci through his “satanic skull,” crack said “disgusting elf skull” or that Fauci’s family be “dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire.” Connally was sentenced to three years in prison earlier this month.
DeSantis’s war against everybody who didn’t vote for him in 2018 has included state officials who adhered to the medical, scientific and in particular federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has said his primary goal in addressing the various and its variants, rather than to address a public health crisis, reduce spread of the virus or prevent deaths, has been to protect freedom. This freedom doesn’t extend to anyone who disagrees with his public posturing. He has fired state employees, banned academics from public statements, sent law enforcement to search homes. Meanwhile, Florida has a higher rate of COVID infections than the national average, and a higher death rate than the national average.
But that’s policy stuff, and really only one facet of DeSantis’s war against all but the 49.6 percent who voted for him in 2018 (and even those who gave him money, like Disney, if there’s a camera present and dark money to be raised for his PAC). And damn, I’m starting to digress again.
Is this sedition? That’s my question. We have active threats against several kinds of public officials. The ongoing threats against Dr. Fauci are such that U.S. Marshals have been involved in his protection. DeSantis has made himself a national political figure. When he speaks out like this, does he violate the third section of the 14th Amendment?
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
I am very aware that no matter what I think about 14s3, that courts aren’t using it to remove someone from a ballot relative to the aftermath of the 2020 election. That applies, here in Florida, to Attorney General Ashley Moody relative to her participation in Ken Paxton’s attempt to throw out black precincts’ votes in Detroit or her still not totally addressed role in the Republican Attorney Generals Association efforts to promote the Jan. 6 rallies.
However, this plot exists. It has already resulted in a criminal sentence and a former member of Congress who is now governor of the country’s third largest state, with the largest share of Jan. 6 arrests, has used the words that put a man in prison to call for someone to finish the job.
I stretch a bit with analogy, but it’s more a Photoshop pixilation stretch than a Gumby contortion stretch. Putting everything else aside, including the pejorative, this is a call to violence, to deadly violence. The Constitution, as I read it, doesn’t provide how we exclude such a person from running for office. It only says Congress can restore the ability to hold public office by a two thirds vote.
This wouldn’t be a bad test case for how to block someone. I’ve been calling DeSantis “Klanner Ron” ever since he used “monkeying” as a verb in referring to his 2018 African-American opponent, but this quit being funny a long time ago.