As RedState previously reported, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently visited California to do some campaigning and fundraising for his 2024 presidential campaign, with his first stop being in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s neck of the woods.
DeSantis’ owning of Newsom, a frequent critic of his, began right off the bat, first with the release of a new ad that blistered Newsom over the mass exodus that is occurring in the Golden State over issues like the high cost of living, out of control crime, and rampant homelessness while contrasting it with Florida, where a lot of former California residents have landed.
Next, DeSantis himself poked at the Democratic “leadership” shown in the deep-blue state by pointing to trouble spots like Newsom’s home base of Democrat-run San Francisco, where businesses are closing up shop in droves in part due to crime and homeless issues that are driving up the cost of doing business and causing employees and customers alike to feel unsafe, all while police continue to be “defanged” by so-called city leaders:
“We’re here in the once-great city of San Francisco. We came in here and we saw people defecating on the street. We saw people using heroin. We saw people smoking crack cocaine. And you look around, the city is not vibrant anymore. It’s really collapsed because of leftist policies. These policies have caused people to flee this area. They don’t prosecute criminals like they do in most parts of the country, and the wreckage has really, really been sad to see.
I’ve seen so many businesses boarded up, I’ve seen so much riff-raff just running around. It just shows you these policies matter, leadership matters. They are doing it wrong here. No wonder why we’ve had so many people move from San Francisco to Florida over the last few years. We’ve got to stop this madness. We need to restore sanity to this country.”
“Restore sanity” – sounds like a great campaign slogan, but I digress.
Watch:
San Francisco’s woke mayor London Breed was asked about DeSantis’ remarks during an interview she did with a local TV station, and what was remarkable was that she did not dispute a single thing DeSantis said about the dire state of things in her city. Further, the “solutions” she had in mind to combat the issues DeSantis brought up were things like AI and combatting climate change.
No, seriously, that’s what she said. Watch:
In my opinion, this sort of proves the point DeSantis was trying to make. Not only did Breed fail to counter any of what DeSantis claimed about San Francisco but her ideas for fixing the problems that exist there involve implementing things that will do absolutely nothing to reverse the negative trends that have gotten progressively worse over decades of Democrat rule, including during Newsom’s time as both a city supervisor and mayor of SF.
While it’s great to see DeSantis hit the nail on the head when it comes to contrasting Democrat leadership with his own, it’s doubly good when his political opposition essentially makes his points for him.
Related: Reporter Calls Gavin Newsom’s Bluff on ‘Criminality’ Allegation Against Ron DeSantis