It was on this date in 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled former Florida Congressman and current Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who was narrowly elected in 2018. Back in 2012, in his first Congressional run, DeSantis ran as a Tea Party candidate trying to get whatever momentum was left out of that toxic movement, and earned a second term by raving about Benghazi as much as possible in 2014. By 2016, DeSantis was feeling cocky enough that he thought he would be able to fill the void left by Marco Rubio who was leaving his U.S. Senate seat open, and promised he wouldn’t run, so DeSantis made a run for U.S. Senate. It wasn’t going so well, with polls showing not just that DeSantis would be crushed in the general election by any Democratic candidate, but that he would finish not just behind David Jolly, but even behind Carlos Beruff, a complete lunatic and political outsider. When Rubio reneged on his promise to run for a second term for office, it made DeSantis’ decision to instead run for re-election for his House seat look far less craven.
In 2018, DeSantis sought the office being vacated by Voldemort-cosplayer Rick Scott due to term limits. This is troubling to us here at CSGOPOTD because of various alliances that DeSantis has with… well, hatemongers. The Southern Poverty Law Center noted in April of 2017 that Ron DeSantis was teaming up with fellow Congressman Bill Johnson to form the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, and in that endeavor, acting as its chairman, enlisted the help of Daniel Pipes, an anti-Islamic “activist” who has spent three decades demonizing Muslims in the political sphere, including proposing Muslim detention camps in the United States, and claiming that Muslims orchestrated the Oklahoma City bombing and not the anti-government militia lunatics who actually did it.
That relationship with a xenophobic bigot is not an outlier, by any stretch. Only a few weeks after the 2017 election, Ron DeSantis appeared at David Horowitz’s “Restoration Weekend”, a rather polite name for an event that is perhaps better classified as an Islamophobic hate rally, which that particular weekend, featured White Nationalist speakers like Steve Bannon, actual Neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka, and Milo Yiannopoulos, who had already been revealed to have spoken several times in favor of pedophilia, as if his racist agenda wasn’t enough of a reason to be disgusted by him. And yet, there was DeSantis on stage, speaking alongside both Milo and Bannon, without any shame whatsoever. (We haven’t forgotten, Ron.)
So, we’ve established already that Ron DeSantis is allying himself with the Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi/White Nationalist wing of the GOP, and perhaps no greater evidence of that is the pathetic way he’s been trying to defend Donald Trump from the Mueller investigation. In August of 2017, he was actually trying to campaign within Congress to place a six-month timetable on the probe into any collusion between Trump and Russia. That has continued going forward, when he was a frequent guest pundit on Fox News to try and taint the findings of the investigators further, claiming that the investigation was “infected with bias” from the start. Now, why would anyone trying to win office in 2018, during a Blue Wave year, do something so stupid?
Maybe you’d get the idea that DeSantis being proud of being arm-to-arm with those intolerant jackasses means he has some courageous streak… HA! No. Because the day after yet another tragic mass shooting in Florida, this time in Parkland, Florida, a local television reporter that wasn’t satisfied with DeSantis posting “thoughts and prayers” on Twitter put a microphone in front of Rep. DeSantis to ask him if there would be any gun control measures he might support to prevent such a tragedy from happening in the future… and he cravenly ran away claiming he “had to go down” as if there was a vote about to happen.
His voting record as a Congressman showed him vote for Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy (but you know he would want disaster relief if a hurricane hit Florida, and he voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown and then the time came to vote to re-open the federal government, DeSantis voted to keep it closed. as well as a variety of anti-choice, pro-gun legislation through the years. DeSantis also voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act scores of times, and even voted to strip the protections granted by the Americans with Disabilities Act prior to leaving office in 2018.
Since becoming Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis has still been awful, releasing a statement to honor the victims of the Pulse shooting but neglecting to make any mention of it being a hate crime against the LGBTQ community, and then, blaming that omission on his own staff (you still signed it, Ron), Around the same time, DeSantis had a major purge where seven members of his staff quit on the same day (and no one is still sure if there’s a connection). Still, DeSantis is doing what he can to take credit for disaster relief funding coming to his state for Hurricane Irma, when as a Congressman, he voted against doing so for other states. The initial approval ratings after his election mostly held steady for a few months, but the honeymoon ended fast… and nothing made it clear what an incompetent, fascist boob he is like the past eighteen months:
- April 15th, 2020: Gov. DeSantis declares WWE pro-wrestling an “essential” service to keep it open and airing during the pandemic without any pause or oversight.
- May 1st, 2020: As all public health experts are recommending social distancing guidelines and public venues remain closed to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Ron DeSantis orders all beaches to be reopened. Multiple critics compare his flippant rejection of their guidance and putting lives at risk to the Mayor of Amityville in Jaws, who refused to close the beaches for fears of angering local businesses even though a lethal threat would be present…
- June 16th, 2020: As DeSantis’s idiocy causes Florida to become one of the biggest Covid-19 hotspots in the nation and numbers skyrocket, he refuses to even consider to shut down his state again in any way.
- June 26th, 2020: Rebekah Jones, a whistleblower who worked within Florida’s Department of Health first reports that even the enormously high numbers being reported in Florida are manipulated by the DeSantis administration to hide the death toll his ignorance has wrought.
- July 20th, 2020: Gov. DeSantis is sued by the Florida Education Association, after he tries forcing Florida’s public school teachers to go back to in-person learning during the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic. (The infection rate, which was finally coming down over the summer, immediately begins spiking again in the fall as children return to classes and become vectors.)
- October 13th, 2020: There are levels of stupid, and then there’s Ron DeSantis. He hosts Donald Trump’s first political rally since he nearly died of coronavirus, and at the event, DeSantis is filmed maskless, high-fiving Trump supporters, and then immediately wiping his nose. He is somehow being added to his own abysmal Covid-19 statistics in spite of his dumbassery.
- November 11th, 2020: Gov. DeSantis personally drafts legislation to allow Florida citizens to shoot “looters and rioters” that would apply the Stand Your Ground Defense to anyone encountering civil protesters. The bill is written specifically to also allow drivers to run over protesters who “block traffic”, encouraging right-wing terrorists to run over protesters, a crime which is escalating around the country even before his bill is proposed.
- November 26th, 2020: Epidemiologists are dumbfounded by Ron DeSantis’ decision to extend an executive order barring municipalities throughout from Florida from enacting mask mandates, even as the number of infections being reported reaches their highest levels since the pandemic has started. Some go as far as to comment that the Governor of Florida is “on a killing spree”.
- December 7th, 2020: Gov. DeSantis orders law enforcement to sent a SWAT team to do a raid on the home of former Dept. of Public Health official Rebekah Jones as retribution for her telling the public the truth about his incompetent response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and during it, the officers point weapons at her children while moving through the home.
- April 16th, 2021: As Congressman Matt Gaetz is implicated in a sex-trafficking ring that includes a minor, and thus, also a child sex trafficking ring, the media notes Gaetz’s friendship with DeSantis, where he referred to himself as the “Robin” to DeSantis’ Batman, as well as that a top campaign donor of Ron DeSantis, Jason Pirozzolo is implicated in criminal activity, as is one of his top administration staffers, Halsey Beshears.
- April 18th, 2021: A report drops that the DeSantis administration’s “Seniors First” policy on distributing the Covid-19 vaccine specifically worked to get the life-saving vaccine to his rich political donors first, in a brazen show of corruption.
- May 6th, 2021: Ron DeSantis signs SB 90, a bill aimed at targeting voting rights in Florida, and a way to help him suppress the vote to aid his own re-election chances in 2022. In a shockingly partisan move, he has the bill-signing ceremony live on Fox and Friends, beaming with pride over his anti-democratic action.
- May 30th, 2021: Almost a year after she went public with the DeSantis administration’s malfeasance on Covid-19 safety and manipulation of data to minimize the death poll to try and cover up the number of deaths, Rebekah Jones is granted Whistleblower Protections.
- June 1st, 2021: Ron DeSantis signs the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act”, a bill targeting transgender athletes in public schools and universities to ban them from playing in any sport as any gender other than the one of their birth.
Rumors are already beginning that should DeSantis somehow survive re-election via all his voter suppression activities in Florida in 2022, that he would be a dark horse presidential candidate should Donald Trump be unavailable due to health concerns or an acute case of incarceration by the time 2024 rolls around. Based on the above timeline, that’s a terrifying alternative.
One Year Ago, July 2nd, 2020: Ron DeSantis (FL)… 2020 Update
Two Years Ago, July 2nd, 2019: Ron DeSantis (FL)… 2019 Update
Three Years Ago, July 2nd, 2018: Ron DeSantis (FL)… Original Profile
Four Years Ago, July 2nd, 2017: Frank Artiles (FL)… 2017 Update
Five Year Ago, July 2nd, 2016: Frank Artiles (FL)… 2016 Update
Six Years Ago, July 2nd, 2015: Frank Artiles (FL)… Original Profile