Congressman Ron DeSantis, the morning after winning Florida‘s Republican gubernatorial primary, told Fox News that voters shouldn’t “monkey this up” by electing his opponent, Andrew Gillum, who is African-American.
“The last thing we need to do is monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state,” DeSantis said in an interview this morning with anchor Sandra Smith. (See the full video below — the comment in question comes at the 3:30 mark.)
Gillum, whose campaign was backed by Bernie Sanders and mocked by President Donald Trump, opted not to pounce on the comments, at least initially. But other critics, including some Republicans, blasted the comment as a barely concealed attempt to stoke racism in the Republican base.
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The Florida Democratic Party did not hesitate. “It’s disgusting that Ron DeSantis is launching his general election campaign with racist dog whistles,” FDP Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo said in a press release.
A DeSantis campaign spokesperson called the charges “absurd.” In a statement provided to multiple media outlets, he offered a clarification. “Ron DeSantis was obviously talking about Florida not making the wrong decision to embrace the socialist policies that Andrew Gillum espouses,” the statement said.
Smith later pointed to the candidate’s statement on air and said Fox News “does not condone this language and wanted to make viewers aware” of the DeSantis clarification.
The Florida governor’s race is one of several key battles in the mid-term elections, which are going to be a crucial test for the presidency of Donald Trump and the state of the Republican party.
Here is a the interview, with some other reactions coming in on Twitter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=875YtGdaVBw
https://twitter.com/DonCheadle/status/1034813625775489024
"Monkey this up" is not good.
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) August 29, 2018
"Monkey this up" is not a remotely common idiom. Only 17K Google hits, most of which refer to DeSantis's comments today. By contrast, "monkey around" gets more than 7 million hits. pic.twitter.com/QUmyclxLl7
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 29, 2018
So dumb! It was not a racist comment. And only in today’s twisted liberal society, it could be construed as such. Monkey, monkey, monkey…..MONKEY MONKEY!!!! Was that racist? I’m so sorry! Will we now change what monkeys are called? Hello!!!! Dumb liberals!!!!!! A monkey is an animal. You clowns.
I would suggest the racists are the people who equate monkeys with people of color not the man who uses the word in a figure of speech.
Except there is no such figure of speech. It was a sly, surreptitious connotation.
Yes! People are always looking for the negative! If he was a Democrat and said the same would the outrage be at the same level? No. THEN it’s a figure of speech. Sad and keep stretching people. He used one word pseudo-associated with racism but not a racist word and now he’s a racist.
Is it odd that defenders of such language are quick to accuse the offended of being overly-sensitive, yet miss the striking consistency in the language used by each of the offenders? Given a history laden with comparisons of black folks to primates, is it THAT tough to wrap your minds around this choice of language being by design?
and the history of the Irish being compared to apes..you are aware of that also..right?
Fake racist headline, he did not say black opponent. The writer added this to give a racist appearance
Why does this site keep deleting comments that are critical of the writer?
While we can surely debate the prevalence of the Irish/primate comparisons, you’ve actually proven my point. Historical context matters and we are all smart enough to understand this. If the offended in this case were Irish, I’d have no issue in siding with them given the historical context of such comparisons.
Exactly. Anyone with a Bachelor’s degree from Yale (in history, for heaven’s sake) and a JD from Harvard should be smart enough to avoid referencing primates unless you’re actually talking about primates.
So, he’s either not very smart or he’s engaging in dog whistle politics like his hero Trump.
Andrew Gillum for the win. If you have to start explaining yourself for racially interpreted comments the day after a primary win, you’re in big trouble. DeSantis will soon be re-counting his hero’s favorite catchphrase soon, “You’re fired” when the voters reject this racist language.
I love it when people who wanna give 12M in bailouts to farmers call other people “socialists.” That’s monkeyed up!
12B
Home run comment!
That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the billions taxpayers shell out to raise children from absentee fathers. When a Democratic candidate asks his supporters why 70% of black children are being raised in fatherless homes and why 35% of the children in foster care are black, i’ll listen. Has Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Obama or any other black leader said “Stop having children you can’t afford to raise without government assistance?
Yes because only black folks have “children they can’t afford”. Have you or trump & pence or desantis ever told a bunch of white folks to stop having children they can’t afford? Your comment is more racist than “monkey it up”. BTW: IF you are part of the so called pro-life party, are not all children precious? But in reality you are part of the pro-birth party, against abortion and birth control, but screw the kids once they are born. Even your own made up statistics imply that if 35% of children in foster care are black, then 65% must be white or perhaps some other color in the rainbow. But you seem to be upset by only the back kids. HMMMM