Gov. Ron DeSantis is campaigning in Iowa on Jan. 6 this year, and while it’s uncertain if he will bring up the riots by disgruntled Donald Trump supporters which happened three years ago Saturday, what is more certain is that his stance on the riot has changed over time.
During an NBC News interview Thursday, DeSantis said voters didn’t care, and that he’s “not going to spend time, you know, in my campaign either now or in the general election talking about rehashing that.”
“I know that this is a, like, Christmas Day for the media to talk about Jan. 6. I know it’s a big deal in a lot of the corporate outlets. I get that. I’ve not had a single question in Iowa about Jan. 6.”
Over the years, however, he has gotten lots of questions. And his answers have been all over the place.
In the immediate wake of the siege of the Capitol, DeSantis sided with the rule of law over the demonstrators who sought to subvert the certification of Joe Biden’s election.
“Violence or rioting of any kind is unacceptable and the perpetrators must face the full weight of the law. The Capitol Police do an admirable job and I thank them for their hard work,” he said in a statement.
The riots were used as a justification for so-called anti-riot legislation later that year. Days after the incident at the Capitol, DeSantis suggested there was a connection.
“It doesn’t matter what banner you are flying under. The violence is wrong. The rioting and the disorder is wrong. We are not going to tolerate it in Florida,” DeSantis said.
Democrats, however, rejected that explanation, as they saw the bill as targeting Black and Brown people and having no real connection to the actions in the nation’s capital.
Though DeSantis said the politically correct things in the immediate wake of the violence, he moved to a much more skeptical position by 2022, claiming that media focus on the events was just a way to “smear” Trump.
“This is their Christmas,” the Governor told reporters about national media interested in anniversary coverage. “It’s not something that I’ve been concerned about in my job because quite frankly it’s not something that most Floridians are concerned about.”
“I don’t expect anything from the corporate press to be enlightening,” DeSantis added. “I think it’s going to be nauseating, quite frankly, and I’m not going to do it.”
A fundraising email hit similar themes: “It is disgusting and insulting to equate a riot on Jan. 6 to Pearl Harbor and the Sept. 11th attacks like Kamala Harris did. … The Democrat-Media complex is weaponizing Jan. 6 as a way to demonize conservatism across the nation.”
In March 2022, amid calls for the removal of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in light of his wife looking to overturn the election of the current Democratic President, the Governor was unmoved, calling the veteran jurist “the greatest living justice.”
By June 2022, the Governor was griping about the congressional Jan. 6 hearings as a way to “beat a dead horse.”
“Yes, we understand that, that was a year and a half ago,” DeSantis snarked.
In February, DeSantis likened protests at the Florida Capitol to the Jan. 6 riot.
“It’s interesting that if they’re doing that from the Left, then the media says that’s ‘democracy in action.’ They don’t say it’s an insurrection if you take over a Capitol because of that, but I think that’s what it’s getting to.”
The presidential campaign, which offered DeSantis an opportunity to contrast with the former President, instead saw the Governor appeal to his rival’s supporters in a triangulation gambit.
During a July interview with Russell Brand, DeSantis rejected the idea that the siege of the Capitol to block the certification of Biden’s election was an “insurrection,” and said that those protesters were not “seditionists,” but hapless folks who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“It was not an insurrection. These are people that were there to attend a rally and then they were there to protest,” DeSantis said.
Yet despite claiming there was nothing to it, and promising “Day 1” pardons of at least some of the more than 1,100 people who face charges related to the fateful day, he said Trump could have stopped it.
“I think it’s been well documented, kind of, his conduct when it first started how he sat there. He could have obviously leaned in harder, I think. I mean, even his own kids were texting saying, you know, he needs to do more, he needs to do more,” DeSantis told Megyn Kelly.
DeSantis also admonished Trump for standing by as chaos happened on Jan. 6, 2021, as supporters tried to stop certification of the 2020 Presidential Election.
“I think it was shown how he was in the White House and didn’t do anything while things were going on. He should have come out more forcefully,” the Governor said during a news conference in West Columbia, South Carolina.
Yet during a town hall in New Hampshire last summer, DeSantis dodged an audience question about Trump’s role.
“So I wasn’t anywhere near Washington that day. I have nothing to do with what happened that day,” DeSantis responded, refusing to directly engage the question.
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