Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stuck it to millions of his own constituents as he signed a bill obviously designed to keep him and his Trumpy cohorts in power and he kowtowed to Donald Trump and Fox News at the same time.
DeSantis’ beloved Trump won the state of Florida in November, under DeSantis’ own watch, by 5,668,731 to 5,297,045, a difference of 371,656 votes. Apparently, that was too close for DeSantis and his like-minded GOP buddies in the legislature. They just passed a bill to give him a better chance of re-election in 2022 and, possibly, get him or a Republican into the White House in 2024.
Fox and DeSantis have long been political sweethearts. So, when DeSantis signed the bill he undoubtedly knew Fox would love, he did so by giving an “exclusive” to Fox & Friends, in front of a cheering crowd of Trump fan club members. By wild coincidence, I’m sure, Trump announced a few days ago he’d consider DeSantis as a 2024 running mate and credited himself for DeSantis’ victory.
But there’s also no doubt DeSantis knows that the Fox cheering squad is a key ally, too. Today, he turned his back on the 5+ millions who obviously don't worship at the altar of Trumpism to stage an event that was right out of a Fox News producer's playbook.
From Media Matters:
On the morning of May 6, journalists began noticing that Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had barred news media from entering the signing ceremony for Senate Bill 90, a restrictive election law that some opponents have called the “revival of Jim Crow.” Steve Bousquet, a columnist at the Sun Sentinel, tweeted that the media was barred from the bill signing because it was a “Fox exclusive.” (In a later statement, Fox News claimed that it “did not request or mandate” the exclusive.)
…
DeSantis got his “Fox exclusive” on today’s Fox & Friends, signing the bill on-air against a backdrop of jubilant, cheering supporters, after offering commentary on an array of right-wing media grievances such as calls to “defund the police,” too-generous federal unemployment aid, and federal coronavirus aid “reward[ing] bad behavior.” To co-host Steve Doocy’s likely feigned surprise, DeSantis held up a poster to falsely suggest that the collection of absentee ballots, derisively called “ballot harvesting,” is some kind of fraud mechanism that must be shut down to protect democracy.
You can watch the disgraceful event and see why, for the sake of our democracy, DeSantis must be booted out of office next year, below, from the May 6, 2021 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters.
