It was on this date in 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist 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 for re-election, 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. 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 FRED 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.)
Ron DeSantis allied 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 was 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 continued until he left Congress, but he ended up being a frequent guest pundit on Fox News to try and taint the findings of the probe’s 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. (There wasn’t, he’s a coward.)
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 within his administration where seven members of his staff quit on the same day (and no one is still sure if there’s a connection).
The initial approval ratings after his election mostly held steady for a few months, but DeSantis’ honeymoon ended fast… and nothing made it clear what an incompetent, fascist boob he is like the past two years:
- 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.
- April 20th, 2020: DeSantis humiliates himself at a Covid-19 press conference, as he is shown to be just plain too dumb to know how to put a mask on. This may have been the line in the sand as to why he became so anti-mask… the technology is simply beyond his understanding.
- 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. Somehow, he avoids 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 to also allow drivers to run over protesters who “block traffic”, encouraging right-wing terrorists to run over protesters.
- November 26th, 2020: Epidemiologists are dumbfounded by Ron DeSantis’ decision to extend an executive order barring municipalities throughout from Florida from enacting mask mandates as the number of infections reaches the highest levels since the pandemic 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 send 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 their raid, the officers point weapons at her children.
- 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. A top campaign donor of Ron DeSantis, Jason Pirozzolo is implicated in criminal activity, as is a top administration staffer, 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 to help him suppress the vote to aid his own re-election chances in 2022. In a shocking move, he has the bill-signing ceremony live on Fox and Friends.
- May 30th, 2021: Almost a year after she went public with the DeSantis administration’s malfeasance on Covid-19 safety and manipulation of data, 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.
- August 19th, 2021: Florida, due to DeSantis’ incompetence and insistence on doing nothing to stop the Covid-19 pandemic, breaks is own record for Covid-19 hospitializations, getting just shy of 17,000 patients in hospitals with Covid-19 in a single day.
- September 23rd, 2021: Gov. DeSantis’ Covid-19 idiocy sets another record, with 1213 Floridians dying from the disease in a single day. Just his state, 1213 people.
- September 10th, 2021: Ron DeSantis comes out hard as schools reopen against enforcing mask mandates in schools, as well as vaccinations for Covid-19… meanwhile, schools are asked to enforce dress code rules and vaccinate children against over a dozen other diseases before being granted admission.
- September 13th, 2021: Gov. DeSantis threatens cities and counties in Florida with penalties if they mandate vaccines for public employees, before giving a bats*** press conference filled with Covid-19 misinformation.
- October 24th, 2021: DeSantis actively tries to recruit anti-vaxxer cops refusing to be vaccinated in other states to come to Florida, promising them bonuses to come and spread disease when they should be serving and protecting.
- January 6th, 2022: News breaks about how Gov. DeSantis let over a million Covid-19 testing kits expire without being used before their expiration date in Florida. He lies and says there was “no demand” for them, in spite of sold-out stocks in stores, and massive lines at testing sites.
- January 25th, 2022: In yet another press conference where he spreads Covid-19 misinformation, Ron DeSantis continues to claim that antibody treatments of Regeneron are a great method for treating Covid-19, even though the FDA reported that they were useless.
Perhaps not coincidentally, DeSantis is personally invested in the company that makes Regeneron.
- February 1st, 2022: After Neo-Nazis go on the march in Orlando, the press ask both Gov. DeSantis and his press secretary to make a statement, and for some weird reason… Ron Desantis won’t condemn Nazis, and instead spins the question about the unsettling protest into complaints about Joe Biden and Democrats.
Because that’s his priorities. Nazis rank higher than Democrats.
- February 8th, 2022: DeSantis criticizes podcaster Joe Rogan… because he APOLOGIZED FOR USING SLURS. Yes, he’s not critical because he said the slurs, but for saying he was sorry for it.
- March 2nd, 2022: Ron DeSantis bullies a group of teens standing behind him at a press conference at the University of South Florida into taking their masks off, jeopardizing all their health.
- April 19th, 2022: After signing the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Gov. DeSantis takes exception to mild criticism from Disney executives over the “Don’t Say Gay Bill”, and threatens to take away Disney World’s tax-exempt status. He of course, was forgetting that the company would be owed roughly a billion dollars from local municipalities if it happened.
- April 22th, 2022: DeSantis signs the “Stop WOKE Act”, a bill that would prohibit workplace training or instruction to deter harassment against people for race, sexual identity, sexual orientation, or their country of origin.
- June 8th, 2022: Gov. DeSantis’ personal propagandist, press secretary Christina Pushaw, has to retroactively register as a foreign agent, forgetting to mention that she used to work for a authoritarian dictator in the Republican of Georgia.
- June 12th, 2022: Not content to just have signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, DeSantis begins threatening to investigate any parent who takes their child to a drag show (in spite of said shows often being aimed at “all ages” in terms of content).
- June 16th, 2022: The FDA approves the Covid-19 vaccine for toddlers. Ron DeSantis refuses to preorder it, because those children are out of the womb, and therefore, ready to die by GOP standards.
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.
Click Here for Full FRED Archive
One Year Ago, July 2nd, 2021: Ron DeSantis (FL)… 2021 Update
Two Years Ago, July 2nd, 2020: Ron DeSantis (FL)… 2020 Update
Three Years Ago, July 2nd, 2019: Ron DeSantis (FL)… 2019 Update
Four Years Ago, July 2nd, 2018: Ron DeSantis (FL)… Original Profile
Five Years Ago, July 2nd, 2017: Frank Artiles (FL)… 2017 Update
Six Year Ago, July 2nd, 2016: Frank Artiles (FL)… 2016 Update
Seven Years Ago, July 2nd, 2015: Frank Artiles (FL)… Original Profile