Dec
3
DeSantis Clobbered Newsom with Truth and Facts
“One fish, two fish; red fish, blue fish.” — Dr. Seuss
In case you missed it, Sean Hannity recently hosted “The Great Red State vs. Blue State Debate” between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom. The idea was ostensibly to compare & contrast what happens when conservative policies are in effect versus when progressive policies are in effect. What does that look like? Makes sense, since DeSantis (FL) and Newsom (CA) are popular governors of two states representing that dichotomy — two states that are also quite influential in national elections.
It was also a sort of pre-presidential race debate, with Newsom standing in for the currently presumed Democrat candidate, Joe Biden. Of course, as AFN’s Parrish Alford pointed out,
“Many political observers, including DeSantis, believe Newsom is running a ‘shadow campaign’ for the Democratic nomination, positioning himself to be ready and available should something happen to end President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.”
Regardless, Jarrett Stepman of “The Daily Signal” provided six takeaways from the debate, shortened versions of which I present to you here:
- COVID-19 and Lockdowns
DeSantis mentioned businesses in Florida being saved by his COVID-era policies, and Newsom implied that Disney had been negatively impacted. DeSantis countered,
“That’s an interesting point with Disney because I had Disney open during COVID and we made them a fortune and we saved a lot of jobs. You had Disney closed inexplicably for over a year, you were not following science, you were a lockdown governor, you did a lot of damage to your people.”
Ironically, Newsom actually accused DeSantis of being a “lockdown governor”. While the two governors went round-n-round about who had the better record in this area, DeSantis pointed to a Lancet study that showed Florida had “a lower standardized death rate than California did.”
- Illegal Immigration
Newsom defended the Biden administration’s awful record on the border and accused DeSantis of being heartless toward illegal immigrants. When Newsom criticized DeSantis for sending a group of illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, DeSantis reminded him (and the audience) that the wealthy Martha’s Vineyard is in fact a sanctuary jurisdiction, implying that it should be welcoming of the illegal immigrants.
“These liberal elites, they like to impose those burdens on you, they don’t want to have to face the consequences.”
Desantis also pointed out that sanctuary states like California “thumb their nose at federal immigration law,” which can have dire consequences. He gave an example of L.A. refusing to cooperate with ICE that resulted in a 3-year-old girl being murdered by an illegal immigrant with a history of multiple arrests.
- Explicit Books and Parents’ Rights
DeSantis said that schools should not be indoctrinating children and inappropriate material should be removed from classrooms. As an example, he held up a page from a book called Gender Queer that depicted sex acts. After some back-n-forth with Newsom, DeSantis commented,
“He says California respects parents’ rights; this is rich. He’s been telling a lot of whoppers tonight, this may be the biggest….
In California, if you’re a parent in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina, your minor child can go to California without your knowledge and without your consent and get hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and a sex change operation all without you knowing or consenting. How in the heck is that honoring parents’ rights…?!”
- Homelessness
Newsom boasted about all the progress being made on this front in California, particularly under his administration. Rather than addressing that directly, DeSantis showed the “poop map”.
“This is an app where they plot the human feces that are found on the streets of San Francisco, and you see how almost the whole thing is covered, because that is what has happened in one of the previous greatest cities this country has ever had.”
He then pointed out that they cleaned the streets in preparation for a visit from China’s president and CCP General Secretary, Xi Jinping, “…but they’re not willing to do it for their own people.”
- Different Types of Freedom
DeSantis: “California does have freedoms that some people don’t — that other states don’t. You have the freedom to defecate in public in California. You have the freedom to pitch a tent on Sunset Boulevard. You have the freedom to create a homeless encampment under a freeway and even light it on fire. You have the freedom to have an open-air drug market and use drugs. You have a freedom, if you are an illegal alien, to get all these taxpayers benefits…. They are not the freedoms our Founding Fathers envisioned, but they have contributed to the destruction of the quality of life in California and the results speak for themselves.”
Newsom: “I love the rant on freedom. I mean, here’s a guy who’s criminalizing teachers, criminalizing doctors, criminalizing librarians, and criminalizing women that seek their reproductive care. You’re making it harder to vote. You’re banning books. I mean, spare me this notion of freedom.”
- Abortion
Newsom claimed that later term abortions are rare and “almost always because of a fetal anomaly [or] the life of the mother.” DeSantis shot back that data in Florida indicates 88% of later abortions were elective.
When asked why he supported a six-week abortion ban in Florida, DeSantis said he believed in “a culture of life”. He then related a quick story about a late-term abortion survivor (thanks to her grandmother) named Penny Hopper. He did not, however, answer whether or not he would sign a federal six-week abortion ban if he was President. Newsom, on the other hand, refused to identify any abortion limits he would support.
In addition to the lies and misinformation indicated above, a few other demonstrably false “facts” given by Newsom were that Floridians are moving to California in record numbers and that California is a state with low taxes. Sheesh!
To the contrary, DeSantis kept reminding the audience that large numbers of people have been leaving California, many of which — notably including Newsom’s own father-in-law — have moved to Florida. Also, as AFN’s Parrish Alford reported,
“California currently has an unemployment rate almost five points higher than Florida’s. Taxes taint the business climate as California ranks 48th in the Tax Foundation’s state business index rating.”
If you think Newsom looks bad, you’d be right. But, it’s not just me or conservative columnists saying so. Sure, Newsom’s people claim he was the clear winner. But, it bears noting that even others on the Left (including CNN) are a bit more critical of Newsom’s performance. As per Democratic strategist Robin Biro,
“He did a better job of going to bat for Joe Biden than Joe Biden does. I think he could have been more prepared. I believe he walked in there with some swagger last night and kind of let his guard down. I think that he thought that being the seasoned politician that he is, that maybe he didn’t need to do as much debate prep. Gov. DeSantis kept him on his toes.”
Now, while I didn’t watch the debate itself, I did watch a few clips while writing this post, and I think I made the right call to not watch the whole thing. I find this sort of “debate” very frustrating, not least of which due to the participants constantly interrupting and talking over one another. Sean Hannity also seemed to largely fail at keeping them in line. (It seems that Newsom’s wife had had quite enough, too, but that may have been due more to her husband’s performance on stage. She was the one who declared “We’re done here”, even after both debaters had agreed on camera to go into “overtime”.)
Overall, it sounds like DeSantis fared much better and may have helped keep himself in the GOP presidential race. He could certainly use a boost or three against Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, but especially against the plays-by-his-own-rules clear GOP leader, Donald Trump.
