Ron DeSantis, the Republican nominee to become Florida’s next governor, has been accused by Democrats of using a “racist dog whistle” after saying during a TV interview Wednesday morning that voters would take the state’s functioning economy and “monkey this up” by electing his liberal African-American opponent.
DeSantis made the comment at 9:36 a.m. while appearing on FOX News following his victory in the Republican primary. He was speaking about Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who won the Democratic primary after being endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who identifies himself as a democratic socialist.
“He is an articulate spokesman for those far-left views. And he’s a charismatic candidate,” DeSantis said of Gillum. “I watched those Democratic debates. None of that is my cup of tea but, he performed better than the other people there so we’ve got to work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction. Let’s build off the success we’ve had with Gov. [Rick] Scott. The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state. That’s not going to work. That’s not going to be good for Florida.”
... Is to call DeSantis an inarticulate moron. Wonderful.
DeSantis Moderates Hate-Filled Facebook Group That Attacks African-Americans, Parkland Survivors and Muslims
Ron DeSantis, the Trump-endorsed congressman who won Tuesday’s GOP primary for Florida governor, is an administrator on an active Facebook group where conservatives share racist, conspiratorial and incendiary posts about a litany of targets, including black Americans and South Africans, the “deep state,” survivors of February’s massacre at a Florida high school, immigrants, Muslims and, in recent days, John McCain.
DeSantis was listed as one of the group’s 52 administrators and moderators as of Wednesday. His involvement in the group was first noted by a researcher for Media Matters for America on Tuesday.
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The Facebook group, simply named Tea Party, has nearly 95,000 members, and users must join the group to post or comment. The banner for the group is an image of the Confederate, Christian and Gadsden flags flying alongside the flags of the U.S. and Israel. (It isn’t affiliated with the conservative group Tea Party Patriots.)
Members of the group have attacked Black Lives Matter and other African-Americans as “ghetto scum” and ridiculed the teenage survivors of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14. ...
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After McCain died Saturday, members flooded the page with mocking posts, including a satirical headline that read, “President Trump bestows Medal of Honor to John McCain’s tumor.” Another image of a tombstone referred to McCain, a naval aviator who spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before becoming a senator and Republican nominee for president, as a “traitor to America” and a “friend to the Vietcong.”
The group cheered Trump’s reported reference to African countries as “shitholes,” blamed Islam for terrorism and accused Black Lives Matters activists of plotting to take over the country.
In January, one frequent poster who runs a fake news site shared a link to an article warning of “civil war” in Germany between neo-Nazis and Muslim migrants, according to Media Matters. “I’m actually having to root for neo-Nazis...sad state of affairs!” he wrote.
He's on a real roll...