Judd Legum over at Popular.Info has really pissed off Ron DeSantis’ people because Legum had the temerity to point out that DeSantis is trafficking in egregious pedophile lies about a Latina lieutenant governor candidate in Florida:
Yesterday’s Popular Information newsletter exposed that DeSantis, his campaign, and the Florida Republican Party were smearing a political rival — Karla Hernández, Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Florida, DeSantis and his operatives were claiming that, as president of a teachers union, Hernández “protected a sexual predator for years and accompanied him through numerous investigations into his sexual assaults of multiple students.” The truth, as Popular Information documented, is that Hernández did nothing to protect the sexual predator, Wendell Nibbs, and never accompanied him to any investigative hearing or proceeding.
The DeSantis campaign did not respond to Popular Information’s request for comment prior to publication. Instead, after publication, the DeSantis campaign repeatedly attacked Popular Information on Twitter and accused this newsletter of promoting “disinformation.” On the campaign’s official Twitter account, @DeSantisWarRoom, it attacked Popular information at least 9 times. These tweets were then amplified by campaign staffers, including Director of Rapid Response Christina Pushaw.
The DeSantis campaign suggested Popular Information’s report that Hernández took office as president of the Miami-Dade teachers’ union (UTD) on May 2016 was inaccurate. Popular Information’s report, however, is correct. Hernández was elected to the position in March 2016 and took office two months later.
The exact date that Hernández took office is irrelevant to the very serious allegations the DeSantis campaign made against Hernández. But the DeSantis campaign is unable to provide any evidence to back up its claims. The Orlando Sentinel asked the DeSantis campaign to substantiate its allegations, and it did not go well:
Asked what proof the governor had for the basis of his allegations, Bryan Griffin, the governor’s press secretary, deferred the question to campaign staff.
The campaign sent a flyer from the Republican Party of Florida that repeated the allegation that Hernandez-Mats protected Nibbs and a Miami Herald article about the investigation, which also described his support of her candidacy for union president in 2016, but nothing that showed she protected Nibbs or hindered the investigation.
DeSantis is much more dangerous than Trump has ever been because DeSantis is not a moron, but also because DeSantis can give Trump a run for the money in terms of lacking any moral center whatsoever.
This tendency for DeSantis to readily disseminate QAnon-inspired lies about Democrats being pedophile-enablers — even when confronted with proof they are lies — proves that DeSantis will do anything to get elected.
DeSantis really scares me because he is probably the cunning and capable proto-fascist about which billionaires on the American extreme Right have daydreamed. Last time they made the mistake, by default mostly, of backing an idiot.
They aren’t making that mistake again.
