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Viral Video: DeSantis in Jerusalem Explodes Over Questions About His Alleged Role in Gitmo Force Feeding
Last summer, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis released a campaign ad, painting him as the Tom Cruise character in the popular “Top Gun: Maverick” blockbuster film. Called “Top Gov,” it showed DeSantis in the iconic Aviator sunglasses, wearing a bomber jacket before zipping on a flight suit, walking onto the tarmac, donning a flight helmet, and piloting a fighter jet.
It was a clear attempt to build off the popularity of the film, and to highlight DeSantis’ military bonafides, even if the Florida Republican was not a Navy fighter pilot.
Ron DeSantis did serve in the Navy, but his character was more akin to another Tom Cruise film, “A Few Good Men,” a story about Navy JAG officers.
DeSantis is a Yale graduate who went on to teach history at a Georgia private college prep school (his time there too is seen as controversial) before getting his law degree at Harvard.
He served in the Navy from 2004-2019, not as a fighter pilot but as a JAG (Judge Advocate General) officer “at the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” according to his official biography. He essentially was a lawyer whose job it was to protect the rights of those detained at Gitmo.
But there have been allegations made that he supported the force-feeding of Gitmo prisoners, which the United Nations Human Rights Commission says amounts to a form of torture.
“Hundreds of ‘enemy combatants,’ held without charges, had gone on hunger strikes. As pressure grew to end the protests, DeSantis later said, he was part of a team of military lawyers asked what could be done,” The Washington Post, revisiting the issue, reported last month.
“’Hey, you actually can force-feed,’ DeSantis said he responded in his role as a legal adviser. ‘Here’s what you can do. Here’s kind of the rules for that.’”
“Ultimately,” The Post reported, “it was the Pentagon’s decision to authorize force-feeding. Detainees were strapped into a chair and a lubricated tube was stuffed down their nose so a nurse could pour down two cans of a protein drink, according to military records. The detainees’ lawyers tried and failed to stop the painful practice, arguing that it violated international torture conventions.”
DeSantis has denied the allegations, including in an interview last month with Piers Morgan.
READ MORE: Everything Ron DeSantis Did Yesterday Is Wrong – And Many People Are Noticing
CBS News (video below) compared that interview with remarks DeSantis made in 2018, which The Post quoted. In 2018 DeSantis said, “everything at that time was legal in nature one way or another.”
But he was once again asked about it this week, during what his office is describing as an “international trade mission” to Japan, South Korea, Israel and the United Kingdom.
It was in Israel where he got the Gitmo question, and for the second time this week DeSantis’ response to a reporter’s simple question while he traveled overseas has gone viral.
On Monday in Japan, a reporter had asked him about his poor presidential-candidate polling numbers, which continue to sink.
“I’m not a candidate, so we’ll see if and when that changes,” was DeSantis’ snarky response, which wasn’t helped by what many noticed as his curiously bobbing head movements.
That video has now been viewed 7.7 million times on Twitter.
“I’m not a candidate, so we’ll see if and when that changes,” Gov. DeSantis, who is in Japan right now, says when asked about polls that show him falling behind Trump. pic.twitter.com/nDVeyBoVHN
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) April 24, 2023
That was Monday.
On Thursday, DeSantis exploded on a reporter when asked about the Guantanamo Bay allegations related to the force-feeding prisoners.
“No no, no, all that’s BS,” DeSantis replied (video below) before the reporter could even finish his question.
“Totally BS,” he added as he tried to move on to another reporter.
Asked again about force-feedings, Desantis snarled in response, “Who said that?”
“How would they know me? OK think about that. Do you honestly believe that’s credible? So this is 2006, I’m a junior officer. Do you honestly think that they would’ve remembered me from Adam? Of course not,” he responded angrily, during the press conference in Jerusalem at the Museum of Tolerance.
“They’re just trying to get into the news because they know people like you will consume it because it fits your pre-ordained narrative.”
Ron DeSantis just had a MELTDOWN when questioned about his time working at Guantanamo Bay on tour in Jerusalem.
Without FDLE to target journalists, Florida’s governor has NO CLUE how to respond to questions.
This happened at Israel’s Museum of Tolerance.pic.twitter.com/VlorMiv0c3
— Grant Stern (@grantstern) April 27, 2023
Insider reports that “Mansoor Adayfi, a Yemeni citizen, was held at Guantanamo Bay for 14 years, and has told news outlets that DeSantis witnessed him being force fed during a hunger strike in 2006.”
“As I tried to break free, I noticed DeSantis’s handsome face among the crowd at the other side of the chain link. He was watching me struggle. He was smiling and laughing with other officers as I screamed in pain,” Adayfi in an op-ed for Al Jazeera.
Watch the videos above or at this link.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
