#christina pushaw

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The news cycle was packed on the last Monday in March. Reporters from coast to coast spent the day feverishly working on stories about the Oscars slap heard ‘round the world, President Joe Biden calling for regime change in Russia, Republican politicians dabbling in cocaine and group sex, and the confirmation process for the first Black female United States Supreme Court Justice.

Things hummed in similar fashion at right-wing outlets, which added their takes to the online cacophony. But at the end of the day, one story assignment popped into the inboxes of a large, yet highly select set of conservative media: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signing the Parental Rights in Education Act.

DeSantis and his friends in conservative media claim the law, which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, is a measure to protect kids from being groomed and prematurely introduced to sexual subject matter at school. It was passed in response to growing outrage, particularly online, a moral panic over teachers supposedly sexualizing their classrooms.

Although educators, LGBTQ people, and their allies have fiercely resisted the law, it’s been widely touted in right-wing circles, part of an effective media campaign by the administration to shunt criticism and tout its importance.

Emails obtained by the Daily Dot reveal the DeSantis administration’s talking points on the Don’t Say Gay bill, a blend of fact and fiction sent to a slew of reporters, producers, editors, and far-right influencers, who in turn covered it in lockstep with the Governor’s views.

This report is based on nearly 900 pages of documents received from a public records request and dozens of articles and tweets by the more than 50 members of the media who received the same email from DeSantis’ press secretary the day he signed the "Don’t Say Gay" bill. These documents, articles, and tweets further underscore how the prominent homophobic and transphobic Twitter account Libs of TikTok factored in as Florida proposed, then passed, the controversial "Don’t Say Gay" law.

The Daily Dot received these records from a request for emails and correspondence from or by DeSantis, his press office, and then-Press Secretary Christina Pushaw that mentioned Libs of TikTok or its account holder Chaya Raichik.

Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok has been described as “an anti-LGBTQ+ hate machine” whose posts incite attacks on teachers, children’s hospitals, and Pride events. (Raichik insists she merely amplifies content and is blameless for the bomb and death threats, violence, and trolling.)

Her account exploded after she created it in late 2020; by the following October, she had 370,000 Twitter followers. But few outside the right-wing Twitter bubble had heard of Libs of TikTok.

One influential and active Twitter user was very familiar with Raichik: DeSantis’ Press Secretary, Christina Pushaw. (Pushaw is now the director of rapid response for his reelection campaign.) In April, Media Matters reported that Pushaw and Raichik had interacted on Twitter over 100 times since June 2021. The previous month, Pushaw said Libs of TikTok “truly opened my eyes” on LGBTQ curriculum in schools.

Records the Daily Dot received show that Raichik communicated with DeSantis’ team.

On Oct. 28, 2021, Raichik DMed to confirm that DeSantis had banned mask mandates in schools. “Have a recording from OCPS board meeting where a board member asks for a 6 week mask mandate for k-12,” she wrote.

Although the account on the other end is not identified, it appears to be Pushaw. It replied in the affirmative and added that the state was withholding funds from schools, including the district Raichik referenced, for disobeying DeSantis’ anti-mask decree.

“We have a legislative session in a couple of weeks to make new laws that strengthen protections for the parents of public school kids, so we can better enforce this law,” she added.

The "Don’t Say Gay" bill was also introduced that session.

The correspondence between Raichik and DeSantis’ team picked back up months later, per records the Daily Dot obtained.

Neither DeSantis’ office nor his campaign, where Pushaw now works, responded to an emailed request for comment on Tuesday.

On March 8, the day the Florida legislature passed the "Don’t Say Gay" bill, Raichik attempted to tell on KinderCare, a privately-held, national provider of childcare and education, for supposedly offering “LGBTQ curriculum.”

“This is illegal in Florida,” she wrote.

The account replied that the Governor hadn’t signed the bill yet, hence the “LGBTQ curriculum”—where kids were asked to switch the caps of markers—wasn’t illegal yet.

However, it reassured Raichik that she’d sent her concerns to the deputy chief of staff in charge of education. “I think if anyone can think of a way to put a stop to this it’s him,” the account wrote. “And he always talks to the gov.”

While Raichik would send tweets to inform on teachers, the account sent Pushaw’s tweets to Libs of TikTok to be amplified.

DeSantis’ press office’s communications about the "Don’t Say Gay" bill and the ensuing coverage of it in right-wing media provide a vivid illustration of just how effective the Florida Governor’s efforts to control the press on the topic were.

On March 28, the day DeSantis signed the bill, his office posted a public release describing the legislation as a “historic” effort to “protect parental rights in education.”

Behind the scenes, his press team worked 50 people in the conservative press. An email from Pushaw went to reporters, producers, and editors at a broad spectrum of outlets ranging from the biggest names in right-wing and social media to obscure blogs and local publications. More than a dozen Fox News employees were on the list, as were people at intensely partisan outlets like the Epoch Times, Post Millennial, and Breitbart News; right-wing political figure Dan Bongino; and influencers Ian Miles Cheong and Brandon Straka.

By analyzing online archives and social media records, the Daily Dot found that each of the two dozen outlets Pushaw contacted covered Don’t Say Gay bill’s signing: Fox News, Epoch Times, Daily Wire, Rebel News, Breitbart News, The Federalist, Daily Caller, Florida’s Conservative Voice, two ABC affiliates, The Capitolist, Washington Examiner, National Review, The Blaze, Telemundo, The Post Millennial, One America News Network (OAN), PJ Media, The Free Press, Newsmax, Newsweek, Town Hall, Alachua Chronicle, and El American.

Many outlets that didn’t receive this email also covered DeSantis signing the bill, and the ones she emailed may have already planned to do so. Some on her list also appear to have attended the bill’s signing.

The content of Pushaw’s email is reflected in the tone and tenor of the recipients’ coverage of the "Don’t Say Gay" bill.

Articles by outlets on Pushaw’s list accused Democrats of “misleadingly attack[ing] … ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill” (Fox News), called it the “parental notification bill” (Daily Wire), and praised the governor for “prevent[ing] the sexualization of children” (El American) by signing the “anti-grooming bill” (The Post Millennial and Rebel News).

Pushaw’s email includes a “myth vs fact” attachment that “debunks common false narratives.”

In its first fact, it says the bill doesn’t ban the word “gay.”

The media echoed this point. “The bill does not ban the word ‘gay’ in school settings,” Fox News wrote.

The document also claims that the bill is about parental rights and implies that schools give kids prescription medication without parental consent. “Schools should never give students medical treatments (for example, cross sex hormones for students who identify as transgender) behind their parents’ backs,” it states.

The Epoch Times noted the bill “reinforces the fundamental rights of parents to make decisions” and ensures parents will be notified and allowed to opt out of any medical care schools might provide their children.

As PolitiFact reported in 2011, Florida already requires schools to obtain written consent before providing any medication, even over-the-counter medications like aspirin. There are no documented cases of Florida schools giving children hormone replacement therapy or puberty blockers, which require a prescription.

While the right-wing press regurgitated the Governor’s claim that the law is necessary to stop schools from sexualizing kids, the email Pushaw sent acknowledged that Florida’s educational standards don’t actually include “inappropriate sexual content or gender ideology.”

Not many of the ideologically affiliated outlets noted the bill was passed to prevent something that Florida was openly admitting wasn’t happening. That’s perhaps because Pushaw insisted schools were teaching those matters nevertheless.

Yet, nearly all her examples of supposed inappropriate instruction kids receive in school occurred outside Florida.

Pushaw also found a way to work Libs of TikTok into her section on what wouldn’t be allowed under Florida’s bill, highlighting a video from the account that happened in Illinois.

The bill also shared a number of examples from other conservative channels like The Post Millennial and The Federalist, the same ones receiving the release Pushaw sent to hype the bill, part of a recursive right-wing loop that’s helped stoke this current panic.

Right-wing coverage of the bill was in lockstep.

Some outlets—particularly the larger, national ones—did address criticisms of the bill and analyze it to varying degrees.

Most on Pushaw’s list glossed over or entirely omitted the fact that "Don’t Say Gay" regulates classroom discussion in all the grades, focusing instead on its prohibition of instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Even the stories that do quote the bill’s language include lines like this one in the National Review, “Rather than a bigoted effort to ostracize LGBTQ students and faculty, the bill is explicit that it is designed to keep curriculum about sexuality out of kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.”

One of Pushaw’s key points, which proponents often repeat, is that the bill doesn’t ban the word “gay” in schools.

“Throughout the bill’s travels through committees as well as the state House and Senate, it has been criticized by some as being anti-LGBTQ and dubbed the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, although the word ‘gay’ doesn’t appear in the verbiage of the legislation,” the Epoch Times noted.

The bill may not include the word “gay,” but it does say “sexual orientation”—twice. Human Rights Campaign Legal Director Sarah Warbelow further pointed out that, while it may not include that specific word, all the content and conduct its supporters claim violates the law concerns LGBTQ people and issues.

“We know that this isn’t going to cause school districts to stop having students read Shakespeare, for example, Romeo & Juliet,” Warbelow said.

The document also claims that it’s a “myth” that the bill requires schools to out LGBTQ kids to their parents, which can be harmful and dangerous—even deadly. Warbelow, an attorney, says this is an inaccurate interpretation, as the law requires schools to get parental consent before providing students with mental health counseling.

The Washington Examiner wrote, “Provisions in the new law bar school officials from ‘[discouraging] or [prohibiting] parental notification of and involvement in critical decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being.’”

The outlet did not note that this could require schools to effectively reveal their child’s sexual orientation to a parent or guardian.

“Not only is that the only logical way to read that provision, based on leaked documents within numerous counties within Florida, that is how their general counsels are interpreting that provision,” Warbelow told the Daily Dot in a phone conversation on Thursday.

Many of its critics point out that "Don’t Say Gay" is aimed at the LGBTQ community broadly, but most especially at transgender and nonbinary people. Each of the four things Pushaw points to as an example of unacceptable, i.e. illegal, things “found in Florida” schools deal with gender identity. Those items include one children’s and one young adult book apiece that feature transgender protagonists, and two graphics designed to help younger children understand the concept of gender identity and sexual orientation.

Told of how DeSantis’ team influenced coverage, Eli Erlick, who founded the Trans Student Educational Resources, opined that they’re polluting the information ecosystem to obscure the bill’s true meaning.

“By withholding these statements from less biased news sources and news sources that will propagate their agenda, they’re creating this circle of discourse about what the Don’t Say Gay bill really is.”

DeSantis can be downright hostile when the media asks him hard questions or refutes his assertions. Pushaw, his former press secretary and current director of rapid response for his campaign, embodies the same mannerisms. She doesn’t hesitate to attack reporters whose coverage or questions rub her the wrong way.

In August 2021, Twitter temporarily suspended Pushaw for directing her followers to “drag” the Associated Press and its reporter over a story that one of DeSantis’ donors was linked to a hedge fund that invested in Regeneron, the COVID-19 treatment that DeSantis was bellowing about all over the media.

Yet she can be helpful when the press is on her side. When a college student contacted her for help writing a response to their school newspaper’s article criticizing "Don’t Say Gay" last April, Pushaw responded just 30 minutes later. Her lengthy email included all the talking points she’d sent right-wing media the day DeSantis signed the bill and some additional thoughts of her own about the “baseless partisan smear” the school newspaper published.

“Please let me know if you have any questions! Kind regards,” Pushaw wrote in closing.

She took a similarly friendly tone when outlets contacted her for comment about the Washington Post’s plans to reveal Chaya Raichik was behind Libs of TikTok that month.

Pushaw provided these outlets with her entire correspondence with the Post reporter, including several of Raichik’s tweets. “She does a great job exposing degeneracy by showcasing liberals in their own words. It’s a shame that any journalist would want to ruin her life,” she wrote.

“This is why you’re the best in the biz,” a Daily Caller reporter responded to Pushaw.

Politicians commonly curate lists of friendly media and tailor their communications accordingly.

“It’s not unusual for government offices or elected officials to send press releases to media outlets they believe will give them favorable coverage. But professional journalists should verify information and challenge any statements that are misleading or raise other concerns,” Rod Hicks, ethics and diversity director of the Society of Professional Journalists told the Daily Dot in an emailed statement that did not address the specifics of DeSantis’ office’s communications with the press.

“One of the most important roles of a journalist is to serve as a watchdog over government affairs for the public.”

[nodynasty4us]

From the June 1, 2023 opinion piece:

It all adds up to the most aggressive anti-Trump advocacy from someone who wants and expects to have a future in Republican politics since 2016. This isn’t Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger, fierce Trump critics who clearly were buying one-way tickets to an early retirement from Congress, with perhaps the sweetener of a CNN contract. DeSantis is making a bid, not to howl into the wilderness about Trump, but to take the party from him.

Now, since that’s the end in mind, DeSantis’ case is carefully circumscribed. He is not making a comprehensive argument against Trump as unfit to serve. Rather, DeSantis wants to get to his right on key issues and convince Republicans sympathetic to Trump and to his politics that the former president failed to deliver and isn’t reliable.

[nando161mando]

"With DeSantis staffer Christina Pushaw once again in the scandal spotlight over the release of chats showing campaign staff coordinated to make a video featuring Nazi imagery — its important to remember her previous Nazi associations abroad in Georgia."

https://bird.makeup/users/miaagainstfash/statuses/1686426157648924673

[angelx1992]

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/08/christina-pushaw-desantis-foreign-agent-saakashvili/

[beardedmrbean]

Illegal immigrants are looking to flee Florida after a new law in the state of Florida passed, according to people working with migrants who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new law May 10 that criminalizes the act of knowingly transporting migrants into the state who entered the country illegally, requires hospitals to obtain patients’ immigration statuses and provides $12 million to the state to  transport migrants. Some illegal immigrants in the area, however, are reconsidering their future in the state over the crackdown, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official working in California and an immigration worker told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Because of the uncertainty and actions of DeSantis, non-citizens in Florida are looking at other sanctuary cities outside of Florida,” the DHS official told the DCNF.

“A lot of them come here seeking medical benefits and treatments, and with those being difficult to acquire now, a lot of them want to come to states like California, where all those resources are provided,” the DHS official added.

Patricia Andrade, director of Raices Venezolanas Miami, a nongovernmental organization serving Venezuelan immigrants, told DCNF she’s heard from migrants that they fear the use of E-Verify, which is mandatory for many employers in Florida. E-Verify is used by employers to check that job applicants are eligible to work in the country.

“Many are leaving because of E-Verify and some are afraid,” Andrade said.

Roughly 770,000 illegal immigrants live in Florida, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

“We have to leave Florida,” an illegal immigrant living in the Sunshine State for more than a decade told Axios. “I love Florida, I love the weather, I love the people. But I knew we had to leave when I read what was in that law. It isn’t safe.”

DeSantis filed paperwork Wednesday to launch his presidential bid. He is expected to make his formal announcement on a Twitter space with Elon Musk Wednesday evening.

DeSantis has sought to take a hawkish stance on illegal immigration by deploying state resources to the Texas-Mexico border and to Florida’s coastal border. He also transported migrants on flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on Sept. 14.

Immigration advocates quickly criticized the move and launched legal battles, arguing that DeSantis misled the migrants he was transporting.

“So what you’re saying is… the law is working? Good,” DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw wrote on Twitter of illegal immigrants leaving.

[progressivepower]

The Political Education of Christina Pushaw, Ron DeSantis’ Enforcer on X http://dlvr.it/T1MnGv

[mariacallous]

It’s a story as American as apple pie: a young man walks into a bar with an AR-15, a semiautomatic weapon that is capable of killing a lot of people in a very short time, and proceeds to kill a lot of people in a very short time. The latest iteration of this story came on Saturday night in Colorado Springs. On the eve of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a gunman opened fire in an LGBTQ+ nightclub, killing five people and injuring at least 25 in what is widely thought to have been a hate crime. Those numbers would have been far higher had it not been for the bravery of two unarmed people at the bar, who restrained the killer.

You know what’s most shocking about the massacre in Colorado Springs? The fact that it felt so inevitable. Over the past year there has been an escalation in dangerously dehumanising anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. The idea that LGBTQ+ people are “groomers” and paedophiles has become a mainstream conservative talking point pushed by everyone from Fox News to Republican politicians. Christina Pushaw, the press secretary for the Florida governor Ron DeSantis, for example, said that a new law preventing Florida schools from teaching kids about LGBTQ+ people should be called the “the anti-grooming bill”. If you’re against it, she tweeted, “you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of four- to eight-year-old children”. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the average number of tweets each day using slurs such as “groomer” and “paedophile” in relation to LGBTQ+ people increased by 406% in the month after the Florida bill was passed.

The dehumanising rhetoric has been accompanied by growing violence. The Proud Boys, a far-right group, have been disrupting Drag Queen Story Hour events (in which performers read books to children) across the US, often turning up with guns. In September Boston children’s hospital received bomb threats after sustained far-right harassment sparked by the hospital’s work with transgender youths. The tragedy at Club Q didn’t happen in a vacuum.

[nodynasty4us]

Here's what you will find if you click through to read the entire opinion piece by Douglas MacKinnon, who was a writer for Reagan and for GHW Bush:

Several paragraphs of complaints about the liberal media.

Then he finally mentions the secret weapon, DeSantis's press secretary, Christina Pushaw.

Warnings that Pushaw will stomp all over the liberal media and the Trump campaign when they criticize DeSantis.

[rjzimmerman]

DeSantis rejects climate change rationale for record-breaking rain. (Washington Post)

The rain has become political in Florida.

As residents and businesses in South Florida assessed the damage from this week’s historic rainfall and floods, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration pushed back against assertions that the storm had anything to do with climate change.

A number of records were set as the storm known as Invest 90L inundated roads from Sarasota to West Palm Beach.

The Republican governor declared a state of emergency for South Florida, but at a news briefing Friday he downplayed the idea that the storm was unusual. He said there have been similar events “going back decades.”

“This clearly is not unprecedented,” he said. “I think the difference is, you compare 50 to 100 years ago to now, there’s just a lot more that’s been developed, so there’s a lot more effects that this type of event can have.”

His communications team also made light of the storm, dismissing it as typical summer rainfall. Christina Pushaw, the governor’s former press secretary, who is now an analyst with the state, wrote on X: “Welcome to the rainy season. South Florida is in the tropics. There will be thunderstorms for the next 4-5 months.”

No storm-related fatalities were reported, but some communities experienced waist-deep flooding and residents needed to be rescued.

The brouhaha over how to characterize the storm came a month after DeSantis signed a bill that removes most references to climate change in state law. The legislation, which is set to take effect July 1, eliminates climate change as a priority in making energy policy decisions, even though Florida routinely faces threats from extreme heat, deadly hurricanes and toxic algae blooms.

Florida Democrats, in turn, took jabs at DeSantis’s team for diminishing the storms just as hurricane season gets underway. The season started June 1, and forecasters predict it could be one of the most active on record. They also noted that DeSantis signed a state budget this week that vetoes about $205 million in stormwater, wastewater and sewer projects across the state.

“Living in Florida, what we’re seeing now is not just the same kind of weather that’s been happening for a thousand years,” said state Rep. Daryl Campbell, a Democrat whose district is in Broward County. “We see the impacts of climate change on our day-to-day lives, and we see a governor who vetoes what the legislature passed unanimously to help deal with it.”

Last month, a record-breaking heat wave enveloped the state, with Key West registering a heat index of 115 degrees. The summer of 2023 was the hottest on record for several cities in Florida.

[nonyayo2]

crenshaw calling watters a rino is just 2 rino's butting heads!

[muddypolitics]

(via DeSantis Campaign Leaked Messages Reveal Nazi Video Discussion – Rolling Stone)

you can’t make this stuff up

As it turns out, these videos were being produced in-house by the DeSantis campaign, and shopped out to influencers in order to give the appearance of organic content creation. Hotchman himself produced the video he later boosted via a separate account. The screenshots obtained by Semafor reveal that high level staffers were in the scheme, including Campaign Director of Rapid Response Christina Pushaw, and Press Secretary Bryan Griffinwere. The messages originated from a group chat housed on the encrypted communication app Signal, and titled “War Room Creative Ideas.”

[aronarchy]

[article; not sharing the full original version because it’s racist]

Right-wing antisemitism is allied with the Republican Party and its leaders. The latter dynamic was on display with perfect clarity this weekend when Ron DeSantis refused to criticize white-nationalist slurs.

Last week, Elon Musk endorsed a white-nationalist account stating he was “deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations” because “Jewish communties [sic] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites.” This was not just an antisemitic trope—a metaphor that is connected to, or suggestive of, antisemitic ideas. It was an overt claim that Jewish people are collectively responsible for major social problems and therefore collectively undeserving of sympathy.

Musk, of course, not only endorsed DeSantis but literally staged his presidential-campaign launch. I requested comment from DeSantis’s office on Musk’s antisemitic post last week but received no response.

On Sunday, DeSantis appeared on CNN, where Jake Tapper solicited his thoughts on Musk’s comment. In the face of repeated prodding, he absolutely refused to condemn the comments.

When Tapper asked him the first time, DeSantis claimed he didn’t see Musk’s comment, but proceeded to explain why Musk was actually the victim:

I did not see the comment. And so I know that Elon has had a target on his back ever since he purchased Twitter, because I think he’s taking it in a direction that a lot of people who are used to controlling the narrative don’t like.

Note that DeSantis was not only refusing to condemn the slur but placing it in the positive context of Musk fighting back against the dominant narrative.

Tapper then displayed Musk’s comment, nullifying his excuse that he hadn’t seen it. DeSantis again refused to condemn it. Instead he claimed that left-wing antisemitism is a much greater problem because it has powerful support:

I would say this. The difference is, is that, on the left, that tends to be attached to some major institutional power, like some of our most august universities, whereas I think, on the right, it tends to be more fringe voices that are doing it.

This is obviously a bizarre defense when the supposedly powerless antisemite, Elon Musk, is the wealthiest man in the world and controls its most powerful social medium. (Handing over your campaign launch to an anonymous nobody would have been a weird choice.)

After Tapper generously tried to change the subject (“But let’s turn on—turn to another topic”), DeSantis again insisted right-wing antisemitism is insignificant because “on the institutional side, you have seen this become part of a left-wing movement, a very significant pro-Hamas movement, and it is backed by institutional power.” This prompted Tapper to note again that Musk is hardly powerless, to which DeSantis again claimed, “I haven’t seen it. I know you tried to read it. I have no idea what the context is.”

DeSantis obviously has had plenty of time to review Musk’s comments once again and has still remained silent.

This is not the first time DeSantis has refused to condemn antisemitism on the right. Early last year, a band of white supremacists in Orlando held a rally and roughed up a Jewish student. DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw suggested the reports were unreliable, or that the white supremacists were Democrats in disguise, trying to make DeSantis look bad.

Asked at a press conference about Pushaw’s wild deflections, DeSantis refused to back down. He alluded to “these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me,” running through a historic list of left-wing antisemites.

DeSantis has claimed he was merely denying oxygen to the white-supremacist cell that was operating (and continues to operate) in central Florida. But his refusal to condemn Musk reveals the hollowness of that excuse. You can’t starve Elon Musk of attention. And you can’t deny Elon Musk’s opinions have any weight when you personally selected him as your campaign surrogate.

The true explanation is that DeSantis grasps with perfect clarity that Donald Trump has activated white nationalists as an energetic Republican faction. White nationalists are far from the majority of the party, but they have a loud enough voice that he feels the need to placate them.

“Blessedly, responsible institutional stewards in the Democratic Party have largely refused to indulge the ugly sentiments expressed by the activists in high orbit around the party. But the same could be said of institutionalists within the GOP,” insists National Review’s Noah Rothman.

The term “institutionalist” seems to be Rothman’s lawyerly way of writing the statement to exclude Donald Trump, a loophole so large it renders the defense almost meaningless. The GOP has become a personality cult in thrall to an America First demagogue who routinely traffics in antisemitism and other bigotry, but at least he’s not an “institutionalist”! (Try our hamburgers, now 97 percent maggot-free!)

But DeSantis and Musk reveal that even Rothman’s almost-meaningless defense is not even true.

Before Trump, white nationalists were largely walled off from Republican politics, and a prominent Republican leader would have had no hesitation in denouncing white nationalism. DeSantis is showing what happens when the firewall collapses.

[arpov-blog-blog]

DeSantis undermines his own useful Black Conservative idiots. Now they will simply be useful idiots for Trump..."The bitter fight between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Rep. Byron Donalds over a line about slavery in the state’s revised African American history standards is infuriating several prominent Black conservatives.

Several told POLITICO they fear the issue will play into Democrats’ characterization of Republicans as favoring a whitewashing of American history. Most saw it as an unforced error at the time when Black Republicans feel they’ve been making significant strides within the party.

“It raises eyebrows,” said Diante Johnson, president of the Black Conservative Federation, who is supporting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. “Ron DeSantis is not the candidate for Black conservatives and that’s what [he] constantly, constantly exhibits to us.”

At issue are the new education standards for how Black history is taught in Florida schools that DeSantis signed into law last year. The revised guidelines, released this month, require educators to instruct middle schoolers that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Donalds, who largely praised the guidelines as “good, robust and accurate,” took issue with the idea of “personal benefit” and said that part is “wrong and needs to be adjusted.” Donalds supported DeSantis for governor but has backed Trump in the presidential primary.

That prompted an onslaught from the DeSantis camp. Christina Pushaw, the director of rapid response for the DeSantis presidential campaign, mused, “Did Kamala Harris write this tweet?” referencing the vice president’s recent trip to Florida, in which she denounced the new standards.

DeSantis dug in, disparaging his fellow Republican with one of the worst insults one can lob: comparing him to a Democrat. “Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you going to side with the state of Florida?”

To some prominent Black Republicans, it was a DeSantis misstep. And one that comes as his campaign is attempting to jump-start its flagging operation.

“It’s just not a good position for the DeSantis campaign to take. And they’re doubling down and that’s what’s even more disgusting,” said the Black Conservative Federation’s Johnson."