Ron DeSantis Takes a Page Out of Trump’s Playbook When Asked to Respond to Nazis

Footage of neo-Nazis demonstrating in Florida went viral over the weekend. In the Orlando area on Saturday, some 20 white nationalists saluted Hitler, waved Nazi insignia, and yelled antisemitic slurs at passersby; a similar display occurred the following day. Local law enforcement and a bipartisan group of Florida lawmakers condemned the incidents, with some calling on other state officials to do the same. But Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, stayed quiet. He declined to make a public statement about the rallies until asked to respond to them during a Monday press conference. DeSantis, answering the reporter’s question, revealed what he apparently took to be the most horrifying part of the hate rallies: Political opponents are trying to “smear me as if I had something to do with it,” DeSantis said, according to CNN.

DeSantis accused his critics of trying to “use this as some type of political issue” and said that “we’re not playing their game.” And though he eventually denounced the participants, he also seemed to downplay the seriousness of the incidents, referring to the demonstrators as “jackasses” and “malcontents” who would be held accountable for “doing stuff on the overpass.” (Hanging signs on overpasses or obstructing highway traffic is a violation of Florida law.)

“It should be easy, Ron. Condemn the Nazis,” tweeted Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor of Florida who is running again in this year’s gubernatorial race, this time as a Democrat.

The governor’s belated response to the extremist groups was markedly Trumpist, both in its sheer narcissism—after framing calls to stand up to Nazis as a personal attack, DeSantis touted his history of supporting Jewish people, such as through “record funding” for Jewish day schools—but also because DeSantis seemed more focused on his political reception than issuing a forceful statement. (DeSantis, who is widely seen as a presidential hopeful come 2024, has also been noncommittal on if he’s received a COVID-19 booster, an apparent effort not to alienate parts of his base.)

“While we appreciate Gov. Ron DeSantis referring the matter to law enforcement and vowing to hold the perpetrators responsible, dismissing violent neo-Nazis as just some ‘jackasses’ or attempting to use this as an opportunity to bash political opponents only serves to diminish the impact this hateful behavior has on the entire community,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of The Anti-Defamation League, told Vanity Fair in a statement.

DeSantis’s remarks also came a day after his press secretary, Christina Pushaw, suggested in a now-deleted tweet that members of the swastika-bearing, Nazi-saluting group were not real Nazis but Democratic operatives in disguise, the Miami Herald reports. “Do we even know if they are Nazis? Or is this a stunt like the ‘white nationalists’ who crashed the Youngkin rally in Charlottesville pretending to be Dem staffers?” Pushaw wrote, referring to the white supremacist stunt staged by The Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump Republican group, ahead of the Virginia gubernatorial election. Her response prompted criticism from Fred Guttenberg, the father of a Parkland school shooting victim, who recalled that Pushaw had made a Hitler joke two weeks earlier. The ADL of Florida decried Pushaw’s initial reaction to the demonstrations, as well as DeSantis’s delayed response, on Twitter Monday:

This was actually not the first time that the ADL of Florida publicly called out Pushaw: In November, they pointed to another now-deleted tweet from her and accused her of promoting “a conspiracy theory rooted in antisemitism.” (An email to DeSantis’s press office was not immediately returned.) Pushaw acknowledged that she regretted the “flippant tone” of her initial reaction to the weekend’s incidents, but insisted she “did not ‘give cover’ to anyone” or “condone the disgusting Nazi speech.” She has continued to suggest that a primary takeaway from the weekend was the politicization of it, in which DeSantis was “smeared as a Nazi sympathizer.” 

Pushaw’s approach is in line with her boss’s vision of the press as “just another extension of the political process—a tool to weaponize or use for his own benefit,” The New York Times reports.

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