Ron DeSantis



Ronald Dion DeSantis (born September 14, 1978) is an American politician and attorney serving as the 46th governor of Florida since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Florida's 6th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2013 to 2018. Following his successful reelection as governor, DeSantis announced on May 24, 2023, his bid for President of the United States in the 2024 United States presidential election, and is continuing to serve as governor during his campaign.

2015

 * Too many in Washington display a ruling class mentality and congressional term limits would go a long way towards restoring the citizen-legislator ethos of the Founding Fathers, Americans of all political background overwhelmingly support term limits, yet term limits have floundered in Congress. An approach that phases in congressional term limits reconciles the self-interest of members of Congress with the public–s desire to see these changes enacted and gives us the best chance to make term limits a reality.
 * DeSantis Takes New Approach to Term Limits Press release (May 4, 2015)


 * I think all that has to be vetted in a way that errs on the side of protecting the American people. If there's a chance that someone may be inclined to be an enemy of the country, then I think you have to err on the side of caution.
 * Rep. Ron DeSantis on refugee debate: 'Err on side of protecting the American people' Fox News (November 26, 2015)

2017

 * Look, Hollywood is a cesspool. The idea that Wienstein is alone, or even that conspicuous, I don’t think is true, I think this is pervasive behavior in Hollywood, and I think it does implicate the media. I think they’ve been complicit in it, I think businesses have been complicit in it.
 * "Rep. Ron DeSantis: Hollywood Sexual Misconduct Must Be 'Thoroughly Investigated'" Breitbart (November 2, 2017)

2019

 * I promised to be the most pro-Israel Governor in America and our bold agenda for my upcoming Business Development Mission to Israel includes many historic firsts and strengthens Florida’s ties with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.
 * tweet (May 24, 2019)

2021

 * We looked at the data that we had from other parts of the world as we were getting into March, and we saw that this was a virus that had a disproportionate impact on elderly people and we're the second-oldest state in the country, so that was something that was obviously very concerning to us
 * "DeSantis: 'Flawed assumptions' led some states to send COVID-positive patients to nursing homes" Fox News (February 28, 2021)


 * We are going to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters and we are absolutely going to stand strong in support of the Florida-Israel relationship. The Legislature and I have worked really hard on a lot of great legislation over the past few years on issues including Holocaust education, anti-BDS legislation, security for synagogues and Jewish day schools, and so much more.
 * speech (June 8, 2021)


 * You have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month Not only are they letting them through, they’re farming them out all across the country, putting them on planes, putting them on buses. Do you think they’re worrying about COVID for that? Of course not. Whatever variants there are around the world, they’re coming across that southern border. He’s not shutting down the virus. He’s helping facilitate it. Why don’t you get this border secure? Until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you.
 * August 4, 2021 regarding Joe Biden

2022

 * It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism
 * Regarding the Stop WOKE Act "Ron DeSantis takes his culture war to the next level" CNN (Mon April 18, 2022) text+video


 * We reject woke ideology. We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die!
 * 2022 reelection victory speech (November 8, 2022)

2023

 * [On the January 6 Capitol attack in Washington D.C.] These are people that were there to attend a rally and then they were there to protest [...] Now it devolved, and it devolved into a riot. But the idea that this was a plan to somehow overthrow the government of the United States is not true, and it's something that the media had spun up just to try to basically get as much mileage out of it and use it for partisan and for political aims.
 * I know a lot of people that were there who were just there [...] They didn't have any designs on doing anything. [...] But to say that they were seditionists is just wrong.
 * Podcast interview with Russell Brand (July 21, 2023), as cited in "Ron DeSantis Tells Russell Brand That Jan. 6 'Was Not an Insurrection'", The New York Times (July 21, 2023)


 * We're going to have all of these deep state people, you know, we are going to start slitting throats on day one.
 * At a campaign event in Rye, New Hampshire (August 1, 2023), as cited in "DeSantis vows to 'start slitting throats on day one'", The Hill (August 3., 2023)

About DeSantis

 * In alphabetical order by author or source.


 * There are people now attempting to suppress history and whitewash the systemic racism so central to our nation. Leading the pack of these revisionists is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
 * Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan, "No, Gov. DeSantis, There’s No Upside to Slavery" (July 27, 2023)


 * The central question about DeSantis is this: Is he a corporate tax-cutter or a conspiratorial frother? Is he closer to Mitch McConnell or Marjorie Taylor Greene? The great DeSantis innovation has been to realize how much cover calculated outrage provides for rewarding cronies—and that the more you preach "freedom," the more you can get away with authoritarianism.
 * Helen Lewis "How Did America's Weirdest, Most Freedom-Obsessed State Fall for an Authoritarian Governor" The Atlantic (27 March 2023/May 2023 issue)


 * DeSantis led a Florida law that has already forced women to carry unviable pregnancies to term, just to watch their newborn die. But instead of acknowledge his brutality against women, he wants to scare you with his alleged accounts of struggling people, whom he also won’t help.
 * Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter (June 23, 2023), responding to video of him saying “Don’t tell me [woke] doesn’t affect people’s lives. I was just in San Francisco. I saw … people defecating on the sidewalk. I saw people using fentanyl. I saw people smoking crack.”


 * DeSantis returned to his culture warrior roots, with answers that focused disproportionately on Mexican fentanyl and children’s genitals.
 * Katherine Mangu-Ward in "‘He’s a Clown! And Not Even One of the Good Ones’: Winners and Losers of the G.O.P. Debate", The New York Times Opinion, December 7, 2023


 * Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is rather like Donald Trump, only without the charm.
 * Jay Parini in "Opinion: Ron DeSantis’ new book offers a powerful warning to the US electorat" (March 1, 2023)


 * The title of this book must surely be ironic: The Courage to Be Free. DeSantis is all about the restriction of freedoms wherever possible.
 * Jay Parini in Opinion: Ron DeSantis’ new book offers a powerful warning to the US electorate (March 1, 2023)


 * He's a chilly man, with a heart of ice and — like so many politicians on both the right and left these days — full of resentments, grudges and the urge to destroy anyone who doesn't aree with him. The courage he claims for himself he would deny to many others.
 * Jay Parini in "Opinion: Ron DeSantis’ new book offers a powerful warning to the US electorate" CNN (March 1, 2023)


 * It would be tempting to write off DeSantis, the bombastic Republican governor of Florida, as another unelectable right-wing lunatic unfit for national office. We’ve made that mistake before.
 * Pamela Paul in "What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis" The New York Times (February 9, 2023)


 * It would be easy to write off DeSantis as a cartoon culture warrior or as racist, homophobic, transphobic and xenophobic. He may well be all those things, and so may some of his constituents. But he may not be, and either way, it would be foolish to characterize all his followers as such. Assuming a stance of moral superiority will do us no good. (See: Hillary Clinton, "deplorables.")
 * Pamela Paul in "What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis" The New York Times (February 9, 2023)


 * Finally, we shouldn’t let DeSantis co-opt positions on which Democrats have historical strength and a natural advantage: education, health care, jobs...As many liberals will quietly acknowledge, the Parental Rights in Education Act, which DeSantis signed last year and which opponents nicknamed the "Don’t Say Gay" law, has reasonable and legitimate attractions for a broad range of parents who worry about the focus, efficacy and age appropriateness of what their kids are learning in primary and secondary school. Democratic leadership should worry, too. Keeping quiet or pretending those concerns aren't real won't make them go away.
 * Pamela Paul in "What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis" The New York Times (February 9, 2023)


 * Which brings us back to Trump. We know that he takes DeSantis seriously because Trump has shown signs that he's scared of DeSantis as a competitor. If even Trump knows that much, Democrats are capable of knowing more. Trump may think the best way to defang DeSantis — whom he calls "DeSanctimonious" — is to mock and belittle him. Democrats should recognize it will take far more than that.
 * Pamela Paul in "What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis" The New York Times (February 9, 2023)


 * In the following years, however, more and more of the ideological arguments behind this rebranded white nationalism made their way into the conservative bloodstream. Fox News hosts spoke loudly and frequently about "demographic replacement," a paraphrase of the white nationalist conspiracy theory of "white genocide." Car ramming would become startlingly common at the Black Lives Matter protests that manifested in response to the killing of George Floyd by police, to the point that Republican elected officials like Florida governor Ron DeSantis would urge the passage of laws that define a tactic popularized by the Islamic State as self-defense. (p 110 "The Cruelty of the Nativists")
 * Adam Serwer The Cruelty is the Point (2021)


 * We're winning big, big, big in the Republican Party for the nomination like nobody's ever seen before
 * There it is, Trump at 71 [percent]. Ron DeSanctimonious at 10 percent. Mike Pence at 7 — oh, Mike Pence doing better than I thought​.​
 * Cited by Mark Moore "Pompeo jumps to defend DeSantis after Trump's 'Ron DeSanctimonious' comments" NY Post (November 6, 2022 1:41pm Updated)


 * Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he's going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, "I'm only focused on the Governor's race, I'm not looking into the future." Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that's really not the right answer.
 * Donald Trump on Truth Social, reported in Adam Carlson, Jay O'Brien, and Katherine Faulders, "Trump takes aim at Ron DeSantis, suggesting he's a 2024 rival", ABC News (November 10, 2022).


 * [DeSantis pollster Ryan] Tyson pointed to a voter he had heard speak at a recent focus group in Alabama. “The voter said, ‘I’m voting for DeSantis in 2024 because he is Donald Trump without the crazy’ — his words, not mine,” Tyson said. “That is the kind of voter that we see that is gravitating toward the governor.”
 * Ryan Tyson, quoted in "‘We are getting pretty good at this’: Trump and aides plot indictment response" in The New York Times (June 9, 2023)