A Comprehensive Guide to Why a Ron DeSantis Presidency Would Be as Terrifying as a Trump One – Vanity Fair
Ron DeSantis has not (yet) said if he will run for president in 2024, but with approximately two years to go until the election, and with the caveat that about a zillion things can change between now and then, his candidacy appears to be a forgone conclusion. That prospect is exciting to a number of people—namely, his record-setting pack of billionaire donors—but, as it turns out, having the support of, say, Elon Musk does not mean someone should be president. In fact, it’s probably a good indication someone definitely should not be president, and when it comes to DeSantis, that is most certainly the case.
But wait, you say: Wouldn’t DeSantis be a hell of a lot more preferable to send to the White House than Donald Trump? Shouldn’t we be happy about the fact that, at the very least, he doesn’t seem like the type of guy who would Sharpie over a hurricane map to cover his own ass or force people to think about what he gets up to in the bathroom? And the answer is no! We shouldn’t be!
To be clear, this is not an argument in favor of giving Trump, who announced in November that he will run for a third time, a second term; that man should be legally prohibited from coming within 1,000 feet of the Oval Office and it would clearly be a boon for humanity if he was never heard from or seen again. Rather, it’s an argument that DeSantis—who some recent polls show thrashing Trump in a theoretical GOP primary—would be no better and it would be great if people could avoid giving him the top job in Washington, too.
What, exactly, is there to dislike about the guy? Wellllll:
He thinks it’s okay to treat human beings like chattel
Remember when the state of Florida sent a bunch of planes to Texas; lured Venezuelan migrants onto said planes with the promise of housing, jobs, and basic services; told them they were headed for Boston; and then dumped them on the tiny island of Martha’s Vineyard? All so the governor could score some cheap political points with the gang at Fox News and anyone else who thinks it’s cool to treat people from other countries as subhuman? You should, considering it happened quite recently, it was absolutely stomach-churning, and it’s presumably the kind of stunt DeSantis would look forward to regularly engaging in on a mass scale as president.
He’s dangerously anti-science
After three weeks of taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously by declaring it a public health emergency and ordering a statewide lockdown, DeSantis apparently decided science was for suckers. “We will never do any of these lockdowns again,” he said in April 2020—as thousands of Americans were dying each day—lifting all restrictions on schools, businesses, and government buildings and banning local governments from enforcing their own public health measures, like mask mandates.
After initially telling people to get vaccinated against the virus, he reversed course, refusing to say if he’d gotten a booster shot. He enacted a law prohibiting businesses from requiring proof of vaccination, including in petri dish environments like cruise ships. He withheld pay from school board members requiring masks; held a press conference with a guy who claimed COVID vaccines change your RNA; and offered unvaccinated cops $5,000 to relocate to Florida. In September 2021, he appointed Joseph Ladapo to serve as surgeon general of the state, apparently having appreciated the flurry of op-eds the doctor had written promoting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, opposing masking and lockdowns, and questioning the safety of vaccines. Ladapo later recommended that healthy children not get vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics advising they do so and cited what experts said was a deeply flawed study that also recommended men between 18 to 39 not be vaccinated.
In December, DeSantis announced that he’d petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to convene a grand jury to investigate “crimes and wrongdoing” related to COVID-19 vaccines, and suggested in the petition that anyone who recommended people receive the lifesaving vaccine—like the CDC and Joe Biden—must have been financially compensated to do so. That announcement came approximately one month after the Palm Beach Post noted that “the coronavirus has killed more people aged 65 and over in Florida than any other state in the nation” and that “public health experts outside of the state attribute the trend to the DeSantis administration’s counterproductive COVID-19 policies,” which started when “the Governor began weaponizing health care.”
He wants to make it harder for people to vote and had Floridians arrested as part of another one of his political stunts
Like many a Republican, DeSantis is a big proponent of disenfranchising voters, and has signed a raft of laws making it harder for people to cast ballots for their candidates of choice, including ones limiting the use of drop boxes, hampering Floridians’ ability to vote by mail, and preventing the distribution or food or water to voters waiting on long lines. That a judge found such measures “unconstitutional and especially discriminatory toward minority voters,” according to USA Today, did not stop DeSantis from signing a bill this year creating the Office of Election Crimes and Security, and tasking it with investigating alleged voter fraud. During a press conference he held in August to brag about his work cracking down instances of supposed wrongdoing, the governor told reporters that more than a dozen people had been arrested on charges of voting illegally in the 2020 election and warned, “This is the opening salvo.”