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‘On Day One We Rip All the Woke Out’: DeSantis Vows to Remake US Military as Vets Quit His New Florida State Guard
Governors who run for president are in the enviable position of holding up their accomplishments and promising to do more of the same on a national level. That is literally the basis of Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis‘ presidential campaign. He promised to “Make America Florida.”
But as the DeSantis presidential campaign sputters and flails, with the Florida Republican firing campaign staff amid heavy spending and weak poll numbers, the governor continues to campaign on the promise of turning America into a version of what he likes to call the “free state of Florida.”
How are things in the free state of Florida?
While inflation has plummeted to a mere 3% nationally, down from over 9% just one year ago, Florida’s inflation is the highest in the country, more than double the national average, with several metro areas labeled inflation “hot spots” thanks in large part to housing woes. The Florida housing crisis stems from massive home owners insurance hikes, and DeSantis’ focus on chasing undocumented workers out of the Sunshine State. One year ago in May, CBS News labeled Florida “the least affordable place to live in the U.S.”
To great concern from critics last year, DeSantis restarted the Florida State Guard, an entity first created in 1941 that his predecessors effectively shut down. Lawmakers handed him an initial $10 million. Earlier this month Florida lawmakers hiked their initial approval from 400 troops to 1500.
In announcing he was reconstituting the Florida State Guard, DeSantis suggested its purpose was “to respond to a projected active hurricane season,” and added: “In a natural disaster-prone state such as Florida with a potentially active hurricane season on the horizon, there is a clear and present need for a larger civilian emergency response force.”
That claim is repeated on the Florida State Guard’s official government website.
“In a state that battles hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes and more every year, we are prepared for whatever mother nature may bring,” the front page of the Florida State Guard’s website reads.
“Funded at the state level, the Florida State Guard partners with the Florida National Guard and other disaster response agencies to respond quickly and ensure that communities are provided with humanitarian assistance and disaster response services they desperately need. The Florida State Guard is able to stay longer than the National Guard, at the discretion of the Governor, to provide humanitarian and disaster response services over a greater period of time—allowing the National Guard to return to other duties. The two forces complement each other.”
Despite that very publicly-stated focus, the veterans DeSantis’ State Guard hired are quitting, with some saying they are being trained as a paramilitary force, a joint report from the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times states.
“According to records reviewed by the Herald/Times and interviews with program volunteers, a number of recruits quit after the first training class last month because they feared it was becoming too militaristic.”
Many of the recruits are veterans from the U.S. Armed Forces.
“Weeks into that inaugural June training, one volunteer, a disabled retired Marine Corps captain, called the local sheriff’s office to report he was battered by Florida National Guard instructors when they forcibly shoved him into a van after he questioned the program and its leadership,” the report states.
Major General John D. Haas, Florida’s adjutant general overseeing the Florida National Guard, the Herald reported, in a statement “said the State Guard was a ‘military organization’ that will be used not just for emergencies but for ‘aiding law enforcement with riots and illegal immigration.'”
A retired 20-year Navy veteran, Brian Newhouse, told the Herald: “The program got hijacked and turned into something that we were trying to stay away from: a militia.”
“On the first day of training,” the report states, “Newhouse said he was escorted off the base after lodging several complaints, including that the National Guard’s schedule required training on Sundays, instead of allowing members to use those days for religious services and personal time, as was the original plan.”
How did DeSantis’ first class do?
“On June 30, the State Guard graduated its first class, 120 recruits, far below the 1,500 members state lawmakers approved this year.”
And yet, DeSantis, a former Navy lawyer (“JAG” officer) is touring the country, hitting battleground states, and attacking the U.S. Military, and its Commander in Chief.
The Florida governor claims the U.S. Armed Forces are “woke,” because of President Biden, and unable to successfully recruit.
He promises to remake America’s military.
“When we talk about reinstalling integrity in our institutions, we mean things like our own military,” DeSantis told supporters in South Carolina. “You know, I volunteered to serve in the Navy, volunteered to serve in Iraq, got to serve alongside a lot of great patriots, got to be part of a mission greater than myself, and really was happy to have done it.”
He claimed, “for the first time in my life, I have veterans coming up to me all too frequently saying, ‘I don’t know if I’d want my kids or grandkids to serve in today’s military.’ Why? Because they’re focusing on political agendas, woke ideology, things that are not central to mission accomplishment that causes morale to decline, and it causes recruiting to suffer and even at the height of the fighting in Iraq in places like Fallujah where I served, you still had people showing up to sign up for the Marine Corps and the army knowing their next stop was going to be western Iraq.”
DeSantis claims “people are not signing up because they want to sign up to a military that is focused on the mission. They don’t want to join a woke military. They don’t want to be part of social experimentation. And so as Commander in Chiefon day one, we rip all the woke out and we get back to business and the military. We’re going to be serious about it.”
Watch below or at this link.
“They’re focusing on political agendas, woke ideology, things that are not central to mission accomplishment, that causes morale to decline…as Commander in Chief, on day one, we rip all the woke out and we get back to business in the military.” —@RonDeSantis 🔥 pic.twitter.com/CbxQtQjeNv
— Team DeSantis (@TeamDeSantis) July 16, 2023
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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.
“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.
“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.
READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’
Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.
On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”
On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”
After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:
“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.
“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”
READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is responding to Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was a U.S. president, and she delivered a strong warning in response.
Trump’s attorney argued before the nation’s highest court that the ex-president could have ordered the assassination of a political rival and not face criminal prosecution unless he was first impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate.
But even then, Trump attorney John Sauer argued, if assassinating his political rival were done as an “official act,” he would be automatically immune from all prosecution.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, presenting the hypothetical, expressed, “there are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against.”
RELATED: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military, or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” she asked.
“It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act,” Trump attorney Sauer quickly replied.
SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor: “If the president … orders someone to assassinate [a rival], is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?”
Trump attorney D. John Sauer: “It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act.” pic.twitter.com/RddEEYIUrR
— The Recount (@therecount) April 25, 2024
Sauer later claimed that if a president ordered the U.S. military to wage a coup, he could also be immune from prosecution, again, if it were an “official act.”
The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, was quick to poke a large hole in that hypothetical.
“If the president suspends the Senate, you can’t prosecute him because it’s not an official act until the Senate impeaches …. Uh oh,” he declared.
RELATED: Justices Slam Trump Lawyer: ‘Why Is It the President Would Not Be Required to Follow the Law?’
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the Trump team.
“The assassination of political rivals as an official act,” the New York Democrat wrote.
“Understand what the Trump team is arguing for here. Take it seriously and at face value,” she said, issuing a warning: “This is not a game.”
Marc Elias, who has been an attorney to top Democrats and the Democratic National Committee, remarked, “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’ I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, a former U.S. Ambassador and White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform under President Barack Obama, boiled it down: “Trump is seeking dictatorial powers.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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Legal experts appeared somewhat pleased during the first half of the Supreme Court’s historic hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was the President of the United States, as the justice appeared unwilling to accept that claim, but were stunned later when the right-wing justices questioned the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s attorney. Many experts are suggesting the ex-president may have won at least a part of the day, and some are expressing concern about the future of American democracy.
“Former President Trump seems likely to win at least a partial victory from the Supreme Court in his effort to avoid prosecution for his role in Jan. 6,” Axios reports. “A definitive ruling against Trump — a clear rejection of his theory of immunity that would allow his Jan. 6 trial to promptly resume — seemed to be the least likely outcome.”
The most likely outcome “might be for the high court to punt, perhaps kicking the case back to lower courts for more nuanced hearings. That would still be a victory for Trump, who has sought first and foremost to delay a trial in the Jan. 6 case until after Inauguration Day in 2025.”
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts and the law, noted: “This did NOT go very well [for Special Counsel] Jack Smith’s team. Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh think Trump’s Jan. 6 prosecution is unconstitutional. Maybe Gorsuch too. Roberts is skeptical of the charges. Barrett is more amenable to Smith but still wants some immunity.”
READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act
Civil rights attorney and Tufts University professor Matthew Segal, responding to Stern’s remarks, commented: “If this is true, and if Trump becomes president again, there is likely no limit to the harm he’d be willing to cause — to the country, and to specific individuals — under the aegis of this immunity.”
Noted foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf observed: “Feels like the court is leaning toward creating new immunity protections for a president. It’s amazing. We’re watching the Constitution be rewritten in front of our eyes in real time.”
“Frog in boiling water alert,” warned Ian Bassin, a former Associate White House Counsel under President Barack Obama. “Who could have imagined 8 years ago that in the Trump era the Supreme Court would be considering whether a president should be above the law for assassinating opponents or ordering a military coup and that *at least* four justices might agree.”
NYU professor of law Melissa Murray responded to Bassin: “We are normalizing authoritarianism.”
Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, argued before the Supreme Court justices that if Trump had a political rival assassinated, he could only be prosecuted if he had first been impeach by the U.S. House of Representatives then convicted by the U.S. Senate.
During oral arguments Thursday, MSNBC host Chris Hayes commented on social media, “Something that drives me a little insane, I’ll admit, is that Trump’s OWN LAWYERS at his impeachment told the Senators to vote not to convict him BECAUSE he could be prosecuted if it came to that. Now they’re arguing that the only way he could be prosecuted is if they convicted.”
READ MORE: Biden Campaign Hammers Trump Over Infamous COVID Comment
Attorney and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa warned, “It’s worth highlighting that Trump’s lawyers are setting up another argument for a second Trump presidency: Criminal laws don’t apply to the President unless they specifically say so…this lays the groundwork for saying (in the future) he can’t be impeached for conduct he can’t be prosecuted for.”
But NYU and Harvard professor of law Ryan Goodman shared a different perspective.
“Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward. It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further. Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.”
Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward.
It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.⬇️ pic.twitter.com/F3qXi47ZT6
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) April 25, 2024
NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert scholar on authoritarians, fascism, and democracy concluded, “Folks, whatever the Court does, having this case heard and the idea of having immunity for a military coup taken seriously by being debated is a big victory in the information war that MAGA and allies wage alongside legal battles. Authoritarians specialize in normalizing extreme ideas and and involves giving them a respected platform.”
The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal offered up a prediction: “Court doesn’t come back till May 9th which will be a decision day. But I think they won’t decide *this* case until July 3rd for max delay. And that decision will be 5-4 to remand the case back to DC, for additional delay.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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