On the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke about his experience traveling to ground zero on 9/11 last year as a presidential candidate.
“We had done that after having become friends with a lot of 9/11 families, we heard a lot of stories about not only that day, but different types of challenges that have happened since then. And my wife and I were able to go, go to the different sites with the family members and they would tell you about the loved ones that they lost that day,” DeSantis said.
Meeting “so many people whose lives were turned upside down,” DeSantis added, “strengthens the resolve to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to never forget.”
Florida’s Governor made the comments at Curlew Hills Memory Gardens in Palm Harbor.
The Governor spent days around 9/11 in New York last year, also participating in events that had little to do with the solemn commemoration and floating the idea that the next 9/11 will be due to the porous Mexican border.
He was interviewed on the Ingraham Angle, where he mocked President Joe Biden for “struggling” and “stumbling around the world stage.” He also met Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, to discuss “issues important to the Catholic community,” including “religious freedom, education choice, promoting a culture of life, and more.”
In addition to three campaign fundraisers, DeSantis also had an official roundtable criticizing COVID vaccines, which he participated in via Zoom, seemingly live.
The New York stay didn’t help him in polls; a contemporaneous survey of New York GOP Presidential Primary voters from Siena College showed DeSantis with 6% support in the state.
Speaking Wednesday in Palm Harbor, DeSantis also offered thanks to those who fought in the post-9/11 wars from his perspective as a member of the “post-9/11 generation of veterans,” arguing that “not every political decision made was the appropriate one,” though he didn’t flesh that out with detail.
DeSantis also acknowledged the beginning of education in Florida schools regarding 9/11.
“It also occurs to me that most of the people in our country who are under the age of 30 are either not born yet or are probably too young to have a very firm memory of what 9/11 entailed,” DeSantis said.
Indeed, reporting suggests that is the case even for some students who have been taught about the tragedy.
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