Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida disputed claims made by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist that he was a dictator during a Thursday press conference.
“I think the interesting thing over the last couple of years is you had people that kept wanting to lock people down. I was one of the few in this country that lifted people up,” DeSantis said in response to a question from a reporter about Crist’s claim.
“We protected people’s freedoms, jobs, businesses, we made sure kids could be in school, and we liberated 22 million Floridians from local mandates and restrictions. We protected them against vax mandates so that they could keep working without having that,” said DeSantis.
Crist, a longtime Florida politician had a reputation for being one of the genuinely nicest people in politics. But his years with the Democrats after flipping from the Republican Party seemingly have cured that.
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“I’m going to beat him because I’m running on love, and love always wins. If he wants to run on hate, culture wars, dividing people, and making people hate each other, that’s his turf. It’s not mine. I’m on a different plain. I’m on different turf, and it’s what Floridians deserve.”
“He’s a barbaric, wannabe dictator,” Crist claimed Tuesday in reference to DeSantis.
“He’s torn my state apart,” Crist said. “Those who support the governor should stay with him. I don’t want your vote. If you have that hate in your heart, keep it there.”
“I think the people that are dictatorial are the ones that want to lock you down,” DeSantis said. “I think the people that are dictatorial, the ones that wanted to lock kids out of school for a year, which all of them wanted to do here in Florida, and I stopped it and made sure that kids could be in school. I think it’s dictatorial to say that someone should lose their job based on their choice about whether to get a Covid shot or not. So that’s just the reality.”
“Now there’s a lot of revisionist history, everyone says, ‘Oh, we were supporting the governor all along.’ No, that was not true.” DeSantis said. “I was out there on my own, doing what I thought was right, and I was willing to take whatever political consequences came my way.”
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