California Governor Gavin Newsom sounds like he’s running for President, and that posture includes taking shots at other potential presidential candidates. Visiting the home of as-yet-undeclared presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Newsom said of Florida that on “health and wealth and education, they’re failing.”
Newsom took particular aim at DeSantis’s boasts about Florida’s performance during the COVID crisis, with DeSantis asserting that a limited government response in Florida meant more freedom for residents, more in-school time for kids, and more robust commercial activity for businesses.
[NOTE: In his 2022 State of the State speech, DeSantis said: “Florida has become the escape hatch for those chafing under authoritarian, arbitrary and seemingly never-ending mandates and restrictions. These unprecedented policies have been as ineffective as they have been destructive. They are grounded more in blind adherence to Faucian declarations than they are in the constitutional traditions.”]
Newsom says DeSantis’s claims amount to “a lot of myth, a lot of BS.”
Compared with California, NEwsom says, Florida had “58% higher per capita death rates” under COVID. “That’s freedom?” Newsom asks.
.@GavinNewsom: Florida "had 58% higher per capita death rates under COVID. That's freedom? 58% HIGHER per capita death rates? Their education system? [California] outperformed during COVID… There's a lot of myth out there, a lot of BS." pic.twitter.com/emYNj1CI4l
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) April 12, 2023
Newsom also claims that California school kids academically outperformed Florida school kids and that the California economy rebounded better in the COVID recovery year.
The Florida visit is part of Newsom’s ‘Campaign for Democracy’ in which he’s visiting mulitple states because, he says, “what’s happening in those red states, it’s not who we are. It’s un-American, it’s un-Democratic.”
Newsom says “extremist Republicans are systematically attacking the very foundations of our free society” and says that “we can’t win through the lens of trying to get on Fox and a retort to, you know, Sean Hannity. We gotta go out on the damn road, man.”
Some Californians aren’t so excited about Newsom trying to fix Florida though. As one writes: “Again, please stay focused on California. We have so many problems here. Stirring up more division on a national level does NOT help Californians.”
