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Ron DeSantis Can't Stop Lying About 'Muggings' In California, Gets Dunked On By Facts
The "Don't Say Gay" Governor keeps inflating the crime rates in blue states to make himself look better—it's not working.
Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid is tanking so hard he’s now resorting to inflating crime statistics in blue states to try to make himself look better.
Recently the Florida governor has been claiming he’s heard stories about increased crime rates in Los Angeles and San Francisco, even repeating a story about meeting people from California who were the victims of muggings. But because the “Don’t Say Gay” Republican can’t stop lying, the number of people who have been robbed in his story keeps increasing every time he talks about it.
“Just being in Southern California over the last couple of days, my wife and I have met three people who have been mugged on the street,” he said at the Republican debate on September 27.
California Governor Gavin Newsom immediately shot back against the ridiculously exaggerated claims of out-of-control crime levels in California. “This may be an opportunity, I appreciate, to look up ‘Jacksonville, Florida,’ and he may want to familiarize himself with ‘Miami, Florida’ and his homicide rates, which are 100 percent higher than San Francisco,” Newsom said, according to The New Republic.
DeSantis: My wife and I met three people who had been mugged in CA
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 28, 2023
Newsom: He may want to familiarize himself with Jacksonville and Miami pic.twitter.com/y0nWfuIN5o
Despite this, four days later DeSantis doubled the number of victims in his ridiculous story. In the new version of this fable, he told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo he and his wife Casey have come across “six or seven people that had been mugged in the last year in southern California.”
A Republican lying about crime to bolster their campaign—who would have guessed?
Just makin' sh1t up as he goes along.
— SFDB (@sfdb) October 1, 2023
That's the @GovRonDeSantis way. https://t.co/MMg4rAmN0j
Not only has DeSantis been playing from the well-worn Republican playbook by talking about how lawless Democratic leaning states are, but he’s also been bragging about how Florida’s crime rate is at 50 year low.
“Claiming that Florida is unsafe is a total farce,” DeSantis said when he announced his futile bid for the presidency. “I mean, are you kidding me? You look at cities around this country, they are awash in crime. In Florida, our crime rate is at a 50-year low.”
But according to the Marshall Project, a nonprofit that covers criminal justice, these numbers are laughably incomplete, leaving out data from some of the biggest police departments in Florida, Queerty reports.
"About half of the agencies that police more than 40% of the state’s population are missing from figures the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) used for a state-wide estimation,” the Marshall Project report reads.
DeSantis seems to be incapable of opening his mouth without spewing anti-LGBTQ+ hate or blatant and easily disputed lies. So, you know, he’s a Republican.
Florida doesn’t even report most of their crime figures to the FBI. In fact, only 8% of the Sunshine State’s police departments do. The Miami Police Department, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, and the St. Petersburg Police Department, are not included in the FBI’s crime assessment.
It becomes obvious that DeSantis is lying about his experience of “talking” to California residents about the supposed uptick in crime when you realize that Florida’s homicide rate is higher than California’s.
“Crime is a real issue, but I find the hypocrisy, the unwillingness to be honest with the American people, and the unwillingness to take responsibility—Ron DeSantis, take responsibility for his own crime rates in his own major cities. I find that curious, not surprising,” Newsom said.
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Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
