Maybe the media doesn’t actually want disaster to hit Florida, but they seem to be rooting for it to strike Governor Ron DeSantis, Ben Shapiro observed Wednesday on his podcast and radio show.
As Hurricane Ian gathered strength and prepared to slam into the Sunshine State’s Gulf Coast, critics were faulting conservatives for enabling climate change and speculating about whether DeSantis was up to the job. The category 4 hurricane made landfall near Fort Myers Wednesday afternoon and the state was braced for a 36-hour battering.
“Look for very hot takes from the media about how this is all Ron DeSantis’s fault, both because of global warming and, also, because Ron DeSantis is a very bad man.”
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A “pagan element” has taken over the radical Left, Shapiro said, and it seems to believe disasters that strike red states are carrying out supernatural destiny.
“The reality is, of course, a natural disaster is a natural disaster,” Shapiro said. “And thoughts prayers, resources all need to go towards the people directly in the path of this thing.”
DeSantis spent the early part of the week warning those in Ian’s path to flee to safer ground while also lining up the relief resources that will be needed in the storm’s aftermath. On Wednesday, as the Gulf water surged inland, he told residents still remaining in the area from Naples up to Tampa to “hunker down.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis faces the most consequential 72 hours of his political career, as the state faces a rapidly intensifying hurricane https://t.co/UVFsCtXS9C pic.twitter.com/n3FKFslWKC
— TIME (@TIME) September 28, 2022
It was unclear if politics were behind the delay in President Joe Biden’s phone call to DeSantis, which came well after members of the media noticed he had called a trio of mayors.
“Biden corrected that late in the afternoon after there was enormous blowback for him not calling Ron DeSantis because the two obviously are political rivals,” Shapiro noted.
At a press briefing, DeSantis scolded a reporter who claimed Florida’s response to the hurricane that hadn’t yet hit was “lax.”
“Give me a break,” DeSantis said. “That is nonsense. Stop politicizing, okay? Stop it. We declared a state of emergency when this thing wasn’t even formed. We’ve had people in here. You’ve had counties doing they’ve done a lot of hard work. And honestly, you’re trying to attack me. I get that, but like, you’re attacking these other people who’ve worked very hard, and so that’s just totally false.”
Shapiro warned DeSantis to brace for more criticism. He cited MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who said DeSantis would be “forced to actually do his job when he’s used to spending most of his time hanging out on Fox News and owning the libs.”
“So bottom line in all of this,” Shapiro said. “Don’t follow any of the politicization. There’s going to be an extraordinarily large-scale attempt to preemptively claim that Ron DeSantis has botched the hurricane.“So just be on the lookout for that sort of media coverage because it is just inaccurate,” he aded. “And in the meantime, if you’re a decent person pray for the people who are actually in the path of a major hurricane, that likely will be tearing roofs off of buildings and harming a great number of people.”