As "Nazis" trended on Twitter, Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), addressed last weekend's Orlando Nazi rally, calling those who partook in the gathering as "Jackasses."
During a press conference in West Palm Beach with Sen. Marco Rubio, and Reps. Byron Donalds and Brian Mast, Gov. DeSantis defended himself after Florida Democrats tried to make the case that DeSantis some way condoned the Nazis because he has not openly denounced the group.
Florida progressives such as State Rep. Carlos G. Smith (D-49) and US Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL) paralleled DeSantis with the extremist demonstration, in which the governor responded, "These Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue, to try and smear me, as if I had something to do with it, we're not playing their game."
DeSantis further commented on the situation calling the demonstrators, "Jackasses," and suggested that, "State law enforcement is going to hold them accountable, because they were doing stuff on the overpass, so they're absolutely going to do that and they should do that."
"But I'm not going to have people trying to smear me that belong to a political party that has elevated anti-semites to the halls of Congress, like Ilhan Omar. Those have played footsies with the BDS movement, that even have people in their party that have cavorted with Farrakhan," said DeSantis before boldly adding, "No, we're going to take our record in Florida, and what we've done: Sign the strongest anti-semitism bill in the country, we stood stare-down companies who were indulged in BDS, like Airbnb and we've won. We've provided record funding for Jewish day schools, and we've had the strongest relationship between Florida and Israel than we ever had in terms of education, business, all these tremendous things that have happened since our state visit in 2019."
The Governor further blamed the Democrats for trying to, "Play games, to try to politicize," asking, "Why would they do that? Why would they want to elevate a half dozen malcontents and try to make this an issue for political gain? Well, because they want to distract from the failure that we've seen with Biden and they're all joined at the hip."
