DeSantis: Freedom’s just another word

By BRUCE LOWITT

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has formally acknowledged that his unannounced but presumptive candidacy for president is modeled “from first step to last” on the successful rise of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister.

“I have read Prime Minister Orban’s Roadmap to Power and I have found it quite engaging,” DeSantis said. “His corruption and masterful and cynical manipulation of ethnic nationalism and fear of migrants, much as I have done here, has enabled Vik – we’re on a first-name basis now – to build an oligarchy to rival what Vlad, I mean President Putin, used to have in Russia.”

DeSantis is promoting the banning of a vast variety of books, “and newspapers are next on my list,” while targeting immigrants, unions, school boards, teachers, Disney World, minorities, majorities who don’t agree with him, diversity, equity and inclusion programs and anything else he deems “ideological” in Florida’s university system, as well as the teaching in public schools of history, science, critical race theory and “anything that includes the words ‘gender,’ ‘vagina’ or ‘penis’.”

“With what I’ve done so far and what I plan to do in the coming months to my state’s social system, educational system, political system and the rest, I have no doubt I can build on and complete what (former president Donald) Trump started,” DeSantis said.

“The only thing missing here is actual oligarchs and by the time Congress and I finish reworking the American economy and tax structure, they’ll be in place here as well, taking over the fuel oil industry and transportation and media, and banking and creating shell companies and laundering billions overseas.

“You think we don’t have oligarchs here? We have a bunch, and a lot more on the cusp. It’s only a matter of legitimizing them, a mere formality.”

DeSantis also said the law he signed that stripped Disney World of its special treatment as a separate government district was the first step toward closing down the theme park and resort, turning it into “a retirement community that will make The Villages look like a strip mall.”

The Villages, north of Orlando, is larger than Manhattan with more than 150,000 mostly old, white and right-wing residents. “My kind of town,” DeSantis said of the 3,558-acre planned community whose official flower is the chlamydia.

DeSantis said he also has “skimmed” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent screed, The Right to Be As Right As We Can Get, and found it “inspiring,” so much so that he said his administration would authorize U.S. cities to deploy police against protestors the way Israeli police have cracked down on citizens opposing the judicial overhaul being rushed through the Knesset.

“I know Israel is a Jewish nation,” DeSantis said, “but if Bibi – Netanyahu, not the singer – can rework his courts so he can avoid prosecution by those liars who say he’s corrupt, I think that’s the best way we can enable our Christian nation to protect me and my government from witch hunts, fake news and the rabble who don’t like the way things are and should go back where they came from.”

DeSantis, who won reelection in 2022 by garnering 59.4 percent of the vote, has a slim lead over Trump in polling of Republican voters surveyed.

But the numbers for both drop below three percent when Republican, Democratic and independent voters are asked whether their preferred presidential candidate is DeSantis, Trump or a flaming bag of dogs— left on their doorstep.