Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis acknowledged he would probably not use the phrase “monkey up” again in reference to African American opponent Andrew Gillum but refused to either apologize or even say he regretted having previously made the remark.

Rep. DeSantis visited Cavuto Live this morning where he wasted no time fear mongering about Gillum. DeSantis said Tallahassee Mayor Gillum has “aligned himself with the Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez wing, this Democrat socialism where he’s running on a 40% tax increase, a single payer health care system which would bankrupt the state, so that will derail Florida’s progress.”

Host Neil Cavuto replied, “It’s startling how Floridians would put someone up there like that and have him even with you.” Actually, Gillum is a bit ahead.

DeSantis claimed that was because Gillum “skated through” and “never had a single negative ad” during the primary because nobody thought he would win. “I, on the other hand – I mean, I faced 17 million in negative attacks coming out of the primary,” DeSantis said. Nobody mentioned the $9.3 million worth of friendly airtime that Fox News and Fox Business gave to DeSantis. DeSantis made so many appearances on Fox, Politico reported, that he learned how to apply his own makeup.

Before long, Cavuto asked about DeSantis’ now-infamous attack on Gillum, “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.” Cavuto helpfully added that DeSantis’ comment had been “misinterpreted as a racist comment.”

Nevertheless, Cavuto offered DeSantis the chance to “clarify” and “regret” the comment. “This gives you another opportunity to clarify that and I know you have or tried to across the state and elsewhere, but in retrospect, do you regret using that term?” Cavuto asked.

DeSantis once again showed he was more interested in appealing to white racial resentment than to black voters. “Neil, it’s a phony controversy,” DeSantis said. “It’s being drummed up to try to distract from the clear issues that we have that are front and center facing Floridians. Nobody has been able to be elected in Florida running on a 40% tax increase. He wants this single payer system.”

“I know that, but do you regret it?” Cavuto pressed. “I mean, I know you said you meant nothing racially charged by it. If you had your druthers again, would you have used that term?”

“Of course not … of course not,” DeSantis snapped. But again, he suggested that the only problem was with African Americans who took offense. “We cannot go down the road of non-stop political correctness, and people are going to demagogue what you say - like that’s just unfortunately where we’re at in this country. The voters though, they know that this was a nothing burger. … I’m not going to be derailed by these fake controversies.”

Again, DeSantis could have put the matter to bed by merely saying he made a poor choice of words and apologized to African American voters for seeming insensitive. As NewsHound Ellen wrote, his refusal to do so is nothing less than a big middle finger to them.