Accountability | Florida
DeSantis Ally Blames Pittsburgh Synagogue’s Former President for Massacre
Ron DeSantis ally David Horowitz on Monday blamed the toxic political culture that led to Saturday’s massacre inside a Pittsburgh synagogue on the synagogue’s former president.
Accountability | Florida
Records Raise Questions About Tax Dollars Paying for DeSantis’s 2016 Horowitz Speech
Ron DeSantis’s congressional office spent hundreds of dollars for travel around the time he attended a 2016 conference sponsored by a right-wing figure with a history of racist rhetoric, raising new questions about whether taxpayers paid for the trip.
Accountability | Florida
DeSantis to Headline Anti-Gay Event Days Before Election
Ron DeSantis will be the keynote speaker at an event in Miami next week sponsored by an anti-gay group that opposes same-sex marriage, lobbied against a local law banning gay-conversion therapy, used images of men leering at girls in bathrooms to stir fear about a proposal to accommodate transgender students and called homosexuality “aberrant” behavior.
Accountability | Florida
As House Candidate, DeSantis Penned Racially Charged Book Excusing Slavery
In 2011, as Ron DeSantis was running for a seat in Congress, he penned a book repudiating then-President Barack Obama’s worldview by dissecting his biracial upbringing and questioning his Christianity while also excusing the Founding Fathers for ratifying slavery in the Constitution.
Accountability | Florida
DeSantis Holds Rally with Support from Violent Far-Right Group
At Ron DeSantis’s rally in Sarasota, Fla., on Saturday, a far-right group with ties to white supremacists -- the Proud Boys -- showed up to support the Republican gubernatorial nominee, chanting "lock him up" about his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, who is black. DeSantis’s campaign did not appear to remove the Proud Boys demonstrators from the event, though it distanced itself from them afterward.
Accountability | Florida
DeSantis’s Father Spread Racist, Misogynistic Rhetoric on Social Media
Ron DeSantis’s father shared a Facebook post that called then-President Barack Obama a “cop-hating terrorist,” one of several racially tinged posts he shared on social media in recent years before he turned his attention to his son’s campaign for governor.
Accountability | Florida
DeSantis Staffer and Trump Delegate Was Active Member of Racist Facebook Group
A member of Rep. Ron DeSantis’s campaign shared racist and anti-Islamic posts on Facebook and was a member of a vitriolic conservative group that DeSantis joined earlier this year while running for the GOP nomination for Florida governor. He compared students advocating for gun control after Florida school shooting to “Jews that gave up their firearms to Hitler” and then “led into gas chambers.” In the group, called Tea Party, he called Muslims "animals." Accusations of racial insensitivity have dogged DeSantis since almost immediately after he won the primary on Aug. 28 on the back of a Trump endorsement.