Democrat Governor Riles Up Crowd, “My Party Was Doing Enough”
Democratic Governor of California Gavin Newsom debated Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in December and took the televised opportunity on Fox News to stump for the reelection of President Joe Biden — and argue against DeSantis’s “anti-woke” platform and legislation. (Newsom also attended one of the GOP debates as a Biden surrogate, getting airtime afterwards to present opposing views.)
Before DeSantis announced that he’d suspended his presidential campaign and was endorsing frontrunner Donald Trump, Newsom was special guest on the Friday night political talk show Real Time with Bill Maher.
When Maher asks Newsom why he went after DeSantis, the Governor says: “The reason I started to go into those red states, the reason I started to take on DeSantis…is I didn’t feel my party was doing enough.”
As seen and heard in the clip below, Newsom elaborates: “When you’re going after the LGBTQ community, and you’re talking down to people and humiliating folks, threatening to sue the Special Olympians, when you’re going after the Black community and trying to re-write history and say slavery somehow was some sort of work force development program, damnit, we have to call that stuff out.”
Maher waits for the riled-up audience to stop applauding before he asks Newsom: “Can you teach that speech to Biden?”
[Note: In June 2022, the State of Florida threatened the Special Olympics with a $27 million fine if it didn’t drop its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for athletes competing at the games in Orlando. The organization acquiesced and lifted the vaccine requirement with the statement, “We don’t want to fight. We want to play.” DeSantis and his wife Casey were both honorary co-chairs of the 2022 Special Olympics.]
