Obviously it's a teaser trailer for a presidential run. It's below the fold.
He emphasizes keeping Florida open during the pandemic insanity. I know Trump keeps trying to turn DeSantis' greatest triumph into a weakness by calling him "Shutdown Ron," because DeSantis shut down the beaches for, I think, two weeks, but he shut down those beaches two weeks after Trump recommended general nationwide shutdowns, and a week (I think) after he rebuked Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for re-opening some bars and restaurants and entertainment venues. "I just think it's too soon," Trump said, adding to the media/leftwing chorus of scolding of the governor for risking people's lives.
I've said this before: I completely sympathize with Trump's tough position here -- this was an nearly-unprecedented situation and the entire media and government was screaming at Trump to DO SOMETHING! -- but I will not abide him then turning around and claiming that "Shutdown Ron" should have shown the perfectly-sculpted Balls of Titanium that Trump himself didn't come close to showing, as far as defying the Fauci-Birx-Wallenski Axis of Evil and telling them to pound (beach) sand.
Everyone was screaming at DeSantis to DO SOMETHING! too, you know -- including Trump himself.
Yes, Trump tweeted a mean Twitter about reopening, but DeSantis issued executive orders to reopen. Point DeSantis. In fairness, I think Trump's idea was to rouse public opinion in favor of reopening so he could then issue his own executive orders.
But... he didn't ultimately do that. DeSantis did. He reopened Florida, and he didn't bother with too much Twitter Hamlet monologuing before doing it.
In more DeSantis news, he spoke with Mark Levin about proposed changes to Schedule F of the civil service rules, which would allow presidents to fire #Resistance employees in the civil service. Obviously, he's in favor of it. (Also obviously, it will never happen, alas. Even if we get a filibuster-proof Senate, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Tom Tilis, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins and the rest of the Gang of F8cks would vote against it, in the interests of "comity" and "collegiality." "We need a house cleaning" in the civil service, DeSantis says -- first, we need a house cleaning in the Senate.)
He revealed in his new book that former Disney CEO Bob Chapek complained that the wokeys at Disney pressured him into speaking out against the Parental Rights in Education bill.
Which is what we all already thought.
"As the controversy over the Parental Rights in Education bill was coming to a head, Chapek called me. He did not want Disney to get involved, but he was getting a lot of pressure to weigh in against the bill," DeSantis writes.
"We get pressured all the time," Chapek told DeSantis, according to the governor's book. "But this time is different. I haven't seen anything like this before."
Chapek told shareholders that he had called DeSantis on March 9 to urge him not to sign the bill, which restricts schools from teaching gender and sexuality to children in kindergarten through third grade. Activists nicknamed it the "Don't say gay bill" despite the legislation not using those terms.
Shareholders? Like from the ultrawoke BlackRock?
...
According to a report from the New York Post, Chapek had privately expressed his hesitancy to involve his company in the political issues in Florida, the home of Disney World, in the months prior. But the pressure campaign within Disney and from Democrats nationwide ultimately convinced him take a stand.
DeSantis, however, issued a warning: If Disney got involved with the legislation, "People like me will say, 'Gee, how come Disney has never said anything about China, where they make a fortune?'" DeSantis told Chapek.
The Florida governor said if Disney stayed out of the politics, Disney would face 48 hours of outrage when the bill passed. "[And] when I sign it, you will get another 48 hours of outrage, mostly online,'" DeSantis said, adding, "Then there will be some new outrage that the woke mob will focus on and people will forget about this issue, especially considering the outrage is directed at a political-media narrative, not the actual text of the legislation itself."
DeSantis wrote that Chapek and Disney "ultimately caved to leftist media and activist pressure and pressed the false narrative against the bill."
When Chapek escalated by fighting the law in court -- I forgot they did that, or I didn't even know they did that -- he warned that he might escalate by stripping Disney of its special tax/governance rights over the land it owns.
Which is a threat he followed through on today. Today he signed into law the measure to strip Disney of its special district tax rights and make sure Disney can't saddle taxpayers with its debts. To be honest I'm not sure how all of this works. The media covers it very superficially and I don't think I'm interested enough to do a deeper diver into tax and local rule law.
His book's title -- The Courage to be Free -- is obviously super-anodyne but he's hitting two of the big traditional conservative presidential buttons. Again, it's clearly a presidential race entry/introduction book.
Via David Strom at Hot Air, the media is sure acting like they're worried that DeSantis may be a threat, because they're treating him as almost as bad as, if not worse than, Trump.
No one in the media is saying DeSantis is worse than Trump. No, of course not, because Trump may still be the nominee, and some would say, still is likely to be the nominee.
However, they're now treating him as if he's just as bad as Trump, and setting him up for the inevitable worse than Trump if he does become the nominee.
If you say, "That's silly, how could they ever say anyone is worse than Trump, after literally not metaphorically demonizing him for six years ?"
Well I'd remind you that they've done this with every new Republican candidate since Nixon.
But specifically, with DeSantis, they'll do it like this:
"At least Trump showed that he basically liked gay people, being brave enough to be the first GOP candidate for president to endorse gay marriage! This monster DeSantis wants to literally erase gay people and literally commit genocide against trans people!!!"
And they'll say:
"At least Trump followed most of the advice of his covid advisers, even if he undermined them occasionally in his public statements! This monster DeSantis turned Florida into an open-air Petri dish for pathogens! He let people go out on to the beaches and stand yards from each other in the sunlight and wind where the chances of spreading anything to each other approached one in one hundred million, if not higher!!!!"
Believe me, the media will find nice things to (insincerely) say about Trump. They found nice things to (insincerely) say about Reagan, Bush, McCain, and Romney. (As Bush, McCain, and Romney joined the Democrat Party, their praise became sincere, but before that, they found insincere ways to compliment them pre-transition.)
Right now, the Huffington Post is saying that a man who stuck a screwdriver through the neck of a woman he didn't even know is a kinder, gentler, more decent human being than Ron DeSantis, so, given time, they could even say the same thing about the Orange Debbil Who Grabbies Duh Pusses.
Oh, in addition to sticking a screwdriver through a woman's neck, he also murdered a deputy sheriff when he escaped from prison.
HuffPo gives central prominence to this scumbag's execution-chamber denunciation of DeSantis as "worse" than him, implicitly blessing him as being right:
"I know I hurt people when I was young. I really messed up," Dillbeck reportedly said just before his death. "But I know Ron DeSantis has done a lot worse. He's taken a lot from a lot of people. I speak for all men, women and children. He's put his foot on our necks. Ron DeSantis and other people like him can s--k our d--s."
David Strom comments:
Well, I guess it's settled. DeSantis is a really bad guy if Dillbeck says so.
HuffPo's proof of DeSantis' bad character is this: he signed Dillbeck's death warrant despite the fact that the man was sentenced to death by a jury that did not unanimously impose it. Some wanted a life in prison, while the majority voted for the death penalty. The law allowing this had been changed since, but DeSantis thinks that a 2/3rds majority of jurors should be enough.
Dillbeck, it seems, had only made some small mistakes in his youth (he was in his mid-20s when he killed Vann), but DeSantis is the real murderer for allowing his sentence to be carried out and believing it was just.
Florida's law, I guess, requires conviction by a unanimous jury, same as usual, but only a 2/3rds jury majority to impose the sentence of death.
There's nothing in the Constitution that requires unanimity on sentence votes. (In fact, the Supreme Court has blessed even convictions on 11-1 votes, without specifying how non-unanimous a criminal jury can be before the Constitution would say it's no longer capable of rendering a conviction.)
But anyway, DeSantis is worse than the murderer. He wants to "literally genocide" trans kids.