Just a few short years ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis regularly went on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News to make news.
But lately, the politician and the commentator couldn’t be farther apart, as evidenced by Carlson’s recent interview with gubernatorial candidate James Fishback.
Carlson said he was “out” on DeSantis, the man who previously was a featured guest in the A-Block of his prime time show for his shifting positions on two issues, one being the Ukraine War.
The other issue, which Carlson discussed at length, was DeSantis signing a bill that protected people, including Jews, from being harassed for wearing traditional clothes, having images projected on their buildings, getting trash dumped on their property, being harassed at schools or while sitting Shiva.
“I always admired DeSantis certainly during COVID. I thought he was just a remarkable leader, interviewed him many times. I know him and his wife. And it was the foreign policy stuff that made me wonder, like, what is this and how controlled is he by Ken Griffin and the rest of his donors?” Carlson said, bringing up Griffin, the billionaire investor. “And then (DeSantis) had this moment where he signed a hate speech law out of the country. He flew to a foreign country, Israel, to sign a hate speech law for Florida. And I thought, well, this is obviously unconstitutional. It’s immoral, but it’s also part of an elaborate humiliation ritual where you have to go not just like enslave your own people with a hate speech law, which that is slavery.”
Carlson had previously said Griffin “told (DeSantis) to change his view on Ukraine from ‘It’s a regional conflict we shouldn’t get involved in’ to ‘It’s a super important thing. We should send more money.’”
DeSantis originally called the war a “territorial dispute” and said it was not one of America’s “vital national interests” in a statement provided to Tucker Carlson in what appeared to be an effort to curry favor with the now-former Fox News host.
DeSantis soon enough walked that position back, telling Piers Morgan later, “It wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it.”
DeSantis’ stance was later evolve to call for a “settlement” in the war, before a spirited exchange in July with Carlson in Iowa at the Family Leadership Summit.
DeSantis took issue with Carlson’s criticism that he changed his position. DeSantis told Carlson that the Russian invasion was a simple “territorial dispute,” rejecting Carlson’s characterization of DeSantis’ position “to describe Putin as a war criminal and say that it was central to America’s foreign policy.”
DeSantis has fought back and said Carlson’s “bizarre” attacks are irrelevant and that after Carlson “lost” the Fox show, DeSantis stopped tuning in and “kind of lost track of what he was doing.”