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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) bizarrely claimed Tuesday that the media was rooting for Hurricane Ian to hit Tampa as a approach to advance a “political agenda.”
“You’ve got nationwide regime media” that needed to see Tampa hit by the storm, DeSantis mentioned, “as a result of they thought that might be worse for Florida.”
“That’s how these folks assume,” he advised Brendon Leslie, one of many rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol final yr and the editor of right-wing information outlet Florida’s Voice.
“I imply, they don’t care concerning the folks of the state, they don’t care concerning the folks of this neighborhood,” DeSantis continued. “They wish to use storms and destruction from storms as a approach to advance their agenda, they usually don’t care what destruction is of their wake, they don’t care concerning the lives right here. If they will use it to pursue their political agenda, they are going to do it.”
DeSantis’ workplace didn’t reply to requests for readability on what political agenda he was referring to.
A day earlier, De Santis had snapped at a reporter for asking him if residents of Lee County, the place Hurricane Ian made landfall final week, ought to have been advised to evacuate earlier. DeSantis argued that on the time, the “cone” of the storm’s seemingly path confirmed it wouldn’t hit the county, however the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s charts mentioned in any other case. Meteorologists had additionally warned that even when Ian hadn’t made landfall in that county, the county was nonetheless at excessive danger of flooding.
Greater than 100 folks have died because of Hurricane Ian, with round half of these deaths reported in Lee County.
DeSantis, a possible contender within the 2024 presidential race, has been carrying his branded gubernatorial marketing campaign gear at a number of official hurricane restoration occasions this week, shirking the Division of Emergency Administration jacket he and previous governors usually put on at such occasions.
Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Republican advisor in Florida, advised HuffPost earlier this week that such a “brazen show of marketing campaign merchandise whereas on very severe official enterprise” is DeSantis’ method of dismissing governing expectations.
“DeSantis does this stuff as a result of he is aware of he’ll get away with them, and that’s all that issues,” Stipanovich mentioned. “Proper and incorrect don’t enter into his calculations.”
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