'The enemy can be anyone': Hometown paper blasts DeSantis for weaponization hypocrisy

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been running on a campaign of ending the "weaponization" of government — but his hometown newspaper blasted him for Thursday for building a state machinery for which "anyone's a target."

The Miami Herald editorial board wrote, "Ron DeSantis’ shtick about 'slitting throats' of 'deep state' federal bureaucrats is a tired, rehearsed trope he’s repeated several times as he tries to survive as a Republican presidential candidate."

This, they noted, after DeSantis, "Has injected divisive politics into virtually every corner of state government, who exerted big-government control over what teachers and college professors can say about race in the classroom and what private businesses can include in their diversity training" — all in the name of a war on "wokeness."

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In perhaps the most extreme expression of this to date, Florida AG Ashley Moody, a close ally of DeSantis, stated in a brief in court that school libraries have a duty to act as a "forum for government speech."

Republicans may not see the danger because DeSantis is going after groups they themselves have grievances with, wrote the board — but they should be wary, because "anyone's a target" in this kind of environment.

A key example being the Disney corporation, which had a close partnership with the state GOP until DeSantis took offense at the company's criticism of his anti-gay legislation. "After the company exercised its free-speech rights, DeSantis and a sycophantic Legislature stripped away its control of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, giving the governor’s cronies six-figure salaries to run the agency," the board wrote.

This sort of hypocrisy carries over into everything DeSantis does, the board continued, including his interference in the state justice system, staging highly publicized "voter fraud" arrests in a stunt gone awry, all while saying justice shouldn't be politicized.

"If DeSantis ever becomes president — and that’s looking less likely to happen in 2024 — expect the weaponization of government to proceed on steroids. Following the Trump playbook, DeSantis would brand it as retribution against an enemy," the board concluded. "In Florida, we have learned the enemy can be anyone the governor doesn’t like."