Florida governor Ron DeSantis was at a prayer vigil over the weekend following
a heinous shooting that took place in Jacksonville, Florida.
It was a racially motivated hate crime, and three black individuals were gunned
down and lost their lives as a result of the 22 year old shooter having so
much hatred in his heart that he felt entitled to taking people's lives.
Now, I wanna show you what happened at that vigil.
Listen closely to the crowd and how they feel about governor DeSantis.
>> Speaker 2: We've already been looking to identify funds,
make sure they vanquish security.
[NOISE].
>> Sounds like there's a lot of booze in that crowd.
Now, a city council member from the area actually urged people to stop booing.
I'll give you the details on that in just a moment.
But, Cenk, you wanna jump in?
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, so I like the booing in that context.
So, generally speaking, when folks are giving a speech, I say, look,
protests are great, booing makes sense in certain parts,
but you gotta let the person speak, right?
In this case, they don't have to do anything.
Their community just got shot up by a racist Nazi.
And, did DeSantis help earlier in setting the right environment in Florida?
He did not.
He made them put in stuff into the curriculum saying that slavery
had upsides, and obviously the gun laws in Florida are disastrous.
And so, when he goes and pretends that he's grieving there,
I don't really believe him.
But okay, even if you believe them, it doesn't matter.
They get to grieve any way they like, it just happened.
And so if they think he was not helpful, they gotta every right to boo, and
boom, off the stage, he's a politician.
>> Speaker 1: Now, there was a Democratic Congresswoman who happens to be black,
her name is Ju'Coby Pittman.
She stood up for him.
She later basically went on cable news, CNN,
specifically to say, listen, he wasn't invited to the vigil.
But nonetheless, she explained that days after a white gunman murdered three black
shoppers at a Jacksonville Dollar General store, the hate crime has crippled and
handcuffed our community, and families are hurting.
They're heartbroken, our community is heartbroken as well.
But when asked about DeSantis, Pittman was eager to make it very clear
that despite his taking the mic, this event was not meant to be about him.
In fact, she didn't even know that he was gonna be there, let alone speak.
But nonetheless, she still stood up for him and
kind of stopped the booing as this whole incident was taking place.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I don't mind what she did.
I think it was classy what she did.
>> Right, agree.
>> And so bless her heart for that.
But there's one other reason why I thought the booming was perfectly
appropriate here.
They weren't protesters, they were real people in the community who were having
a genuine reaction to this guy trying to appear to be on their side when they
didn't think he was on their side at all.
And so, they might have viewed it as grandstanding, et cetera.
Look, and a lot of times the protesters are on our side, but even so,
that's why I say, definitely make your point, shake the raffle a little bit,
but let the guys finish, right?
But in this case, these are not protesters,
that's just the community grieving going,
I don't need this guy here telling me his BS after we all got shot up.
>> Speaker 1: And to be fair, I should also note that following the shooting,
Ron DeSantis pledged $1 million in funds for security, specifically
at Edward Waters University, which is an HBCU, historically black college.
And so, that's also the college where the shooter initially went, but
was stopped by a security guard who basically turned him away when he refused
to provide any identification.
So, I'm glad that he's pledging some money for
the university, but he also needs to take a step back and
consider the type of environment he has created, not just in Florida, but in
the country with his rhetoric in regard to the woke mind virus and what's been done.
I believe it's the new school in Florida that was basically
taken over by Ron DeSantis and his cronies, and essentially now
they're just deciding what the curriculum is at that university,
which goes against what the university previously stood for
in its uplifting of diversity and all of that.
So, look, I think that the booing is justified given the grievances that
the people of Florida are feeling right now.
But I also give the city council member a lot of credit for what she's doing.
>> Speaker 2: Okay, last thing.
Look, you have issues with critical race theory, no problem.
I actually have some issues with critical race theory, but
when you pretend that it's being taught in the schools when it isn't,
you're doing that on purpose to drive racial hatred.
So don't come around and pretend that you're aggrieved to find out that, my God,
it turns out there is racial hatred around these parts.
Yeah, but you stoked that up with all this talk about woke mind and all that stuff.
Was he half, or even just 10% as mad about
the people who are not woke but sleeping?
So he's like, woke, you're too sensitive to addressing previous injustices.
How about the people who are not at all sensitive to addressing those?
In fact, they like the previous injustice, like this shooter.
Did Ron DeSantis do a couple of hundred speeches about them?
No, there's no speeches about them until it's too late.
>> Speaker 1: It's not politically advantageous for him to do that.
>> Speaker 2: Of course. >> Speaker 1: Yeah.
>> Speaker 2: So he was part of the people that drove this racial hatred.
So that's why I can't imagine a more appropriate circumstance to boo
someone off the stage.