COMMENTS
Ron DeSantis wanted to divert attention from the abortion issue with an unpleasant stunt. He is now being investigated for possible human trafficking.
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Published
Wednesday 21 September 2022 – 21:18
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The high profile of the governor of Florida and Fox News favorite Ron DeSantis thought it would save the Republican Party from drowning in abortion protests ahead of the midterm elections. Instead, he himself ended up in deep water.
The governor may simply have been guilty of human trafficking and bragging about it. This is the man who is considered Trump’s greatest challenger and likely heir as a presidential candidate.
Last week, DeSantis sent a plane to San Antonio, Texas, where it collected 48 asylum seekers, which it transported to the small island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and dumped outside a local church without warning. Asylum seekers, most of whom fleeing the Venezuelan socialist dictator Maduro, were promised housing and work. They didn’t know the offer came from an unscrupulous man who abused them on his way to the White House.
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The political stunt was broadcast live on Fox News, where reporters stationed put microphones in the faces of small children and asked them in stammering Spanish what they thought of their new home. The children could not answer anyway. Neither they nor their parents knew where they were. They pretended to go to Boston.
The joke was still free both in the Fox camp and in DeSanti’s election show soon after. If the Democrats absolutely want to open the borders, let them have them, DeSantis said amid cheering applause. He was convinced that the liberal citizens of the east coast would protest when they brought asylum seekers to their doors. But it didn’t happen. Instead, the asylum seekers received a roof over their heads, food and health care. People all over the island flocked to help.
What had worked like a shamelessly evil idea on paper, gone terribly wrong. Here they were about to dump the refugees on Celebrity Island, where both Obama and Clinton and other wealthy liberals go on vacation. They were supposed to show hypocrisy on an open stage and at the same time turn the electoral campaign onto the favorite theme of immigration and the border crisis.
But the wealthy vacationers had long since left the island for the season. On their return they were permanent residents, simple workers and fishermen, who without hesitation stepped in to help. Rather, they may prove that they are actually more human than the governor of Florida.
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Donald Trump was also crazy. He was angered that DeSantis had stolen his idea, an old and brutal idea in American politics, among other things, where southern states transported blacks north and states put homeless people on a bus to others. States. The United States is far from united when it comes to the treatment of its citizens, much less newcomers.
Republicans in Florida were also unimpressed by the governor’s political game, many of them exiled Cubans who also fled a Communist dictatorship. Was this a way of dealing with exhausted refugees from a similar regime? Wasn’t DeSantis an enemy of Maduro and therefore mistreating those fleeing tyranny?
Cruelty is the point, he says of the confrontational style of the Republicans. Evil is the point. While awake Democrats are constantly shocked by the evil – using desperate families with children as political pawns can’t be called otherwise – Republicans know it works. Mobilize the main voters. In the Fox News bubble, no one has grasped what really happened, aside from the false claim that Democrats are in favor of open borders, but don’t want asylum seekers to be in their neighborhood. The truth is rather that Joe Biden has tacitly continued Trump’s inhuman border policy and that liberal cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York are full of immigrants.
So DeSantis may have succeeded in reaching the main voters who believe in the simple message; here the Democrats got what they deserved. It’s easy to criticize border states when you yourself live thousands of miles away. Hypocrisy unmasked.
But DeSantis may have suffered greater problems than criticism in liberal circles. He is now being investigated for several possible crimes. The local Texas police chief, from where the asylum seekers were taken, has opened an investigation into the incident. The transport of undocumented asylum seekers from one state to another under false pretenses and without notifying the authorities can simply be human trafficking. In practice, the transport meant that asylum seekers did not have the opportunity to register with the local authorities, as they are required to do. DeSantis may also have problems with federal authorities. As governor, he is only allowed to transport asylum seekers in the state. Furthermore, he used huge funds allocated to care for asylum seekers, not for the campaign.
Party of Order and Law, as Republicans like to call themselves, grappling with law and order after Trump. Inspired by the leader, several prominent local politicians appear to behave like authoritarian despots who can do whatever they want. DeSantis has also adopted Trump’s deterrent mafia method to prosecute anyone who criticizes him with all the power and resources he has.
Meanwhile, refugees continue to flow north to the land of the free without American politicians being able to agree on immigration reform. Despite all his spells to build a wall, Trump has failed to solve the problem with nothing more than gross human rights violations. Joe Biden isn’t doing it silently either.
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