Brash Gov. Ron DeSantis has Florida hanging on his every word, because that’s what autocrats do best, command all the attention and suck the oxygen out of the room of friends and foes.
And so, on the day the nation marked the first anniversary of the unthinkable — democracy attacked by America’s own sons and daughters — DeSantis dishonored the moment with crass words, deflection and denial.
“A politicized Charlie Foxtrot,” the governor called during an early-morning COVID briefing Thursday in West Palm Beach, what hadn’t even taken place yet in Washington: President Joe Biden’s eloquent defense of democracy from Statuary Hall in the Capitol.
Biden delivered a brilliant commemorative speech rooted in history and called on Americans to come together in truth and bipartisanship to pave “the way forward.”
But no chance of a kumbaya moment in DeSantis’ Florida.
For the uninitiated, Charlie Foxtrot — CF — is military slang for a clusterf---, a vulgar way to refer to a chaotic situation. DeSantis loves this sort of coded language that pierces the souls of political combatants carrying Confederate flags the way a sweet song stirs lovers.
He quashed Biden’s gesture before the olive branch of national reconciliation was even extended.
Lying DeSantis’ worst moment
DeSantis didn’t say a word about the domestic terrorists — not when, to our shame, more of the arrested for insurrection hail from Florida than from any other state.
In fact, he argued that there was no insurrection at all.
DeSantis didn’t call the Capitol invaders “patriots” like the former president did.
But, as Biden noted, they were roused by lies told by the “defeated” president and Republicans like DeSantis, who cast doubt on a fair and thoroughly vetted presidential election. They desecrated the temple of democracy. They hunted through its halls elected leaders to murder them, defecated, destroyed property, caused the deaths of five people and wounded more than 100 law-enforcement officers.
All, because they felt entitled to upend for the first time in 245 years of democratic rule, peaceful transfers of power envied around the world by people yearning to be free, like us.
But as damnable as all that is, denial wasn’t DeSantis’ worst moment.
Nor was it when he said that for the “D.C.-New York media,” the attack on the Capitol was like “Christmas.” Hammering on media holding the power accountable is nothing new.
No, the most malignant lie was reserved for feeding his base a conspiracy theory, debunked many times, that the FBI was involved in “orchestrating” the attack on the Capitol.
This Ivy League-educated father of three darlings (one of them, Mason, was with him), an ambitious governor many believe is doing a swell job commanding Florida toward fascism stooped low enough to lead the ranks of angry, white madmen in this country.
And he betrayed not an ounce of shame for standing on the wrong side of history for the sake of political gain. He pushed a false narrative on purpose, knowing that confusion and suspicion keep American voters distrustful and on edge.
Once again, DeSantis also declined to answer journalists’ questions about whether he still supports Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud.
It’s easier to go silent when the only voter fraud found in Florida was among Republicans who voted for Trump several times over in The Villages, a frequent Trump campaign stop and also a DeSantis favorite. Four people have been arrested and charged.
But what else is new in DeSantis World? He and his people can’t control their right-wing autocratic tendencies.
The GOP playbook calls for discrediting mainstream media, questioning legitimate elections, gerrymandering voting districts to favor Republicans, making it harder for minorities to vote, blaming immigrants for what ails a nation prospering from their hard work and unleashing the boogeyman of communism on the population.
Never mind that it’s DeSantis and his people arresting a respected civil rights leader in Jacksonville, Ben Frazier, who only wanted to talk to the governor about his lack of response to the latest surge in a pandemic that’s disproportionately killing his Black community. A Cuba-style moment that was, carting away in handcuffs an older man in a dapper suit, a menace to no one and holding himself with more dignity than DeSantis will ever know.
What’s Florida going to be?
To DeSantis, the commemoration of the Jan. 6 attack is only another opportunity for Democrats and the media to “smear” Trump supporters. As if Republicans didn’t provide an overabundance of those moments themselves.
One of them, Sen. Marco Rubio, is doing his best to compete with DeSantis for national attention by outrageously spreading COVID-19 misinformation and nonsensical denials of the Capitol attack.
On Thursday, Rubio released a video that equated the attempted overthrow of the government with disturbances in some U.S. cities following the videotaped murder of George Floyd by a police officer.
That’s a false equivalency, senator.
Two for the road they are, DeSantis and Rubio, heirs to Trumpism and still devoted sycophants of their maximum leader.
In his speech, Biden challenged Americans to think, “What kind of nation are we going to be?”
In Florida, the answer isn’t optimistic.
Here, democracy will continue to be tested by the authoritarians voted into office.
The insanity and immorality of Jan. 6 isn’t over for us. Far from it, I’m afraid.
