Left lies about DeSantis, from syringes to sex to slavery

OPINION:

The left’s outright lies about Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, suggest that they fear him and aim to sandbag him through their usual methods: rampant deceit and racial division.

First, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” concocted an elaborate fiction in which Mr. DeSantis supposedly arranged for older Palm Beach County residents to receive COVID-19 vaccines through Publix as a payoff for the grocery chain’s $100,000 donation to his reelection campaign. This pay-to-play fantasy began to unravel when Publix explained that its stores had administered seasonal flu shots for years, and the company had volunteered to offer COVID-19 shots on a nonexclusive basis.

Next, left-wing journalists, politicians, and the neo-radical Walt Disney Co. accused Mr. DeSantis of signing the Parental Rights in Education Act, which its opponents call the “Don’t Say Gay” law, and dragging gay rights back to the dark ages before the 1969 Stonewall riots.

In fact, nowhere in the 1,307-word statute does “gay” appear. This law is as silent as the Sphinx about “gay,” “straight” and “celibate.”

This law does say that “classroom instruction … on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3,” a perfectly reasonable position that Americans overwhelmingly support. So Mr. DeSantis’ enemies flat-out lied about this measure to tar him as a homophobe.

Third, leftists play the race card as routinely as most Americans breathe. So, naturally, when Mr. DeSantis objected to the College Board’s Advanced Placement Black Studies curriculum, they accused him of — what else? — a racist conspiracy to whitewash slavery.

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell outrageously claimed that Mr. DeSantis “says that slavery and the aftermath of slavery should not be taught to Florida schoolchildren.” After Mr. DeSantis’ press team screamed bloody murder, Mrs. Alan Greenspan conceded that her execrable comments were “imprecise” — much as it would be imprecise to call Florida a Canadian province. Ms. Mitchell lied.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also lied about Mr. DeSantis: “If you think about the study of Black Americans, that is what he wants to block.”

Mr. DeSantis, in fact, signed legislation that requires teaching slavery.

As Mr. DeSantis’ press secretary, Bryan Griffin, told me, the governor “proposed, championed, and signed” Individual Freedom — House Bill 7. Approved last April 22, the “Stop WOKE Act” established “Required instruction” in K-12 government schools, including “the enslavement experience, abolition … the vital contributions of African Americans to build and strengthen American society and celebrate the inspirational stories of African Americans who prospered, even in the most difficult circumstances.”

This law also encourages teachers to discuss “slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, and racial discrimination.”

Mr. DeSantis also signed House Bill 1213 on June 23, 2020, mandating that Florida students learn about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre, an atrocity perpetrated by some 250 White racists who fatally shot, burned and lynched an estimated 30 to 35 Black Floridians to stop them from voting and scare others from the polls.

After implementing what he supports, Mr. DeSantis recently opposed specific topics in the AP course that go far beyond slavery into something resembling, at best, Black Lives Matter propaganda. A sample:

• “Intersectionality and Activism” features readings by former Black Panther Angela Davis, the 1980 and 1984 vice presidential nominee of the Communist Party USA.
• “Movement for Black Lives” highlights Rutgers sociology professor Leslie Kay Jones, who whined about “the white supremacist superstructures that oppress us.”
• “Black Queer Studies” showcases Yale Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies professor Roderick Ferguson, who explains: “It means building forms of queerness that reject the given realities of the government and the market.”

“Florida statute requires the teaching of slavery and its aftermath,” Mr. DeSantis’ deputy press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, said on Feb. 22 via Twitter. “We just know that ‘queer studies’ has nothing to do with Jim Crow.”

The Democrats’ intellectual and public-policy bankruptcy is confirmed by the fact that leftist politicians and journalists do not challenge Mr. DeSantis’ pro-American, pro-freedom, pro-market governing philosophy. Instead, they yell, “Homophobe!” “Racist!” and lie, lie, lie as loudly as possible.

• Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.