Gov. Ron DeSantis took to broadcast channels on Monday to bash Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Daniel Perez for usurping his Special Session agenda.
The Governor spoke to Mark Levin and Sean Hannity about his gripes with the GOP supermajority that scuttled his Special Session agenda, gaveled out, and introduced their own product — ironically called the TRUMP Act.
DeSantis, who accused the legislative leadership of “theatrics” and weak legislation that unduly empowered the Department of Agriculture with the immigration enforcement he wants in his office, was in high dudgeon as he claimed a spotlight the men with the gavels simply don’t have.
DeSantis addressed “RINOs,” as Levin called them, with the host singling out Perez of Miami as an example.
He said the legislative product “gutted all the enforcement provisions” DeSantis’ allies’ bills contemplated.
“This is really the SWAMP act,” DeSantis disparaged, regarding the bill running in both sides of the Florida Legislature.
DeSantis said the bill “takes away the Governor’s authority” and says the Department of Agriculture “is not known for immigration enforcement.”
“The reality is the proposals we put forth are very strong,” he said.
DeSantis told Levin that Trump told him that he wants “proposals that are (as) strong as possible,” though Trump notably has yet to weigh in publicly on this issue, even though he spoke at length in Doral on Monday rallying members of Congress.
“The bill that the Legislature proposed mentioned agriculture 23 times. It did not mention deportation one time,” DeSantis said, adding that “liberal journalists that write in Tallahassee” are major proponents of the legislative product, and falsely claiming the Florida Democrats and the ACLU back the bill.
DeSantis averred when asked about the “breakdown of the voting” on the bill, which has advanced through special committees in the House largely on partisan lines, but said some legislators are willing to buck the trend.
“We’ve got a number of strong Republicans that are standing up for strong enforcement, but they’re being pressured by leadership, all the rank and file, to go softer and to gut the enforcement,” DeSantis said.
Levin called the leadership “RINOs” again, which DeSantis used as another cudgel against the “media aligning with Florida legislative leaders.”
Asked about the process, DeSantis complained that allied legislators “weren’t allowed to file bills until (Sunday) night.”
“They’re going to put on their bill. I know a lot of the strong conservative Senators will probably offer amendments, but I think that they’re going to hard wire it to be able to exclude our strong enforcement provisions, our provisions that are holding illegals accountable for registering to vote or cracking down on remittances that illegal laborers are sending back home to that we’ve got a whole host of things that are really, really strong, but I would imagine that they’re probably gonna push back on some of that. And so we’ll see what ends up happening,” DeSantis said.
The Governor urged Floridians to “give their state Senators and state Reps phone calls” to pressure them, even as he’d already last week urged Republican Executive Committees to do that to no avail.
And the host urged his listeners to start a “Levin surge” and pressure legislators in kind.
From there, the television hit followed, with Hannity incredulous that DeSantis was getting resistance for his wish list.
“All these legislators ran bashing Biden for four years,” DeSantis said, saying that legislators were rejecting his call to be a “force multiplier.”
“There’s swampy politics everywhere, and some of these legislative leaders foisted a different bill,” DeSantis added, saying the bill “takes power away from me … the power that I’m currently exercising now.”
DeSantis can use the Florida State Guard, National Guard, and Highway Patrol already, he told Hannity, but the “strong enforcement duties” he sought in his legislative package would make a bigger difference.
The question now: Are Tallahassee Republicans glued to cable news during their time off?
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