Over the weekend, Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned that the United States needed to address its political correctness problem, saying that “political correctness will end this country if we don’t stop” it.
DeSantis made his comments during a Saturday speech mainly focusing on the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel earlier this month.
He discussed the support his administration has shown for Jewish communities in his state after the attack including helping evacuate Floridians who were in Israel. He then announced that he has called his state legislature back in for a special session in the next couple of weeks to “expand our state-based sanctions against the Iranian regime.”
“We already have some of the strongest in the United States, we now have an ability to expand those because the money that’s going into Iran, they’re not using it to make the lives of their people better,” he continued. “They’re using it to fund terrorism throughout the Middle East. So we’re standing up and we’re doing what’s right. And again, this is about leading not with mere words, but deeds. And we’ve done that time and time again.”
He also pointed out that the attack on Israel was partially able to happen because its border defenses were overrun, and he said that should show the Biden administration that the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border needs to be taken seriously.
“I was also the first candidate to say that we in the United States cannot accept refugees from the Gaza Strip,” DeSantis said. “And here’s the thing. We got to start looking at these issues with clear eyes. Political correctness will end this country if we don’t stop doing it. And I said you don’t want the Gaza. And what they said was, ‘well, they’re not all Hamas’. Well, look, they elected Hamas. Let’s just be clear. They were cheering for Hamas when Hamas perpetrated this attack, just like they cheered when Al Qaeda knocked down the Twin Towers. They were cheering Palestinian Arabs when that happened.”
“The question isn’t whether you’re all Hamas,” he continued. “The question is, do they teach young kids to hate Jews? Yes. Do they teach young kids that Israel should be wiped off the map? Actually, do they even have Israel in the map on their textbooks? No, it’s not even there. So it’s not a question of whether you’re actually a terrorist or whether you’re a member of Hamas or not. We can’t vet all this stuff out. What I do know is if you bring in hundreds of thousands like people like AOC and the squad want, you will be importing toxic ideology and the pathologies of the Gaza strip into our own country. That is not what the American people deserve. It is not in the American people’s interest to do that.”
“And so we’ve got to get smart about how we handle who comes into our country,” he said. “Europe, what they have done by bringing massive amounts of people into their country, from the Middle East over the last 10 or 15 years, have those people assimilated into what–? No, they’re bringing the same blood feuds that they’re leaving in the Middle East, and they’re replenishing them in places like Britain, in places like Germany.”
“Germany has more antisemitism today than at any time since Adolf Hitler and it is because they’ve been reckless with who they’ve let into this country. So no more political correctness,” he added. “We’ve got to be smart about what we’re doing. And we can’t be importing problems from other parts of the country, particularly when you hate Jews and you don’t want Israel to exist. I’m not taking you in, if that’s your position, so just be clear.”