Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Sean Hannity became locked in an awkward exchange about marriages between first cousins on the latter’s TV show.
DeSantis has been pushing to outlaw the practice in recent days, telling reporters that it was linked to "stealth jihad” while at a press conference on April 6.
The governor made the claim as he signed a law granting state officials greater authority over designating groups as terrorist organizations.
However, while opening the interview on Hannity, the host said that he did not even know that marriages between first cousins were legal.
“Um, maybe I’m just a little ignorant here,” he said. “I didn’t know that it was legal to marry a first cousin.”
DeSantis replied, “Well, in a lot of states, it’s not. Florida needs to get with the program on that one.”
The Florida governor claimed the concept of first cousin marriage is linked to “cultures that are antithetical to American values”, despite it being legal in a number of states.
Sixteen U.S. states fully allow marriages between first-cousins, including California, Colorado, Maryland, New York and South Carolina.
Several other states allow the practice under certain conditions. Marriages between first-cousins is also legal in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany and parts of the Middle East.
“On the broader issue of not allowing Islamist groups to get public money from things in Florida, whether it’s education or any of the other things that we’re doing, you’ve got to draw very clear red line, and the red line I’ve drawn is we’ll spend millions on public safety, millions on education, but not one cent for jihad,” DeSantis claimed.
State lawmakers voted down a proposal to ban marriages between first cousins as recently as March.
During the interview, DeSantis also promoted HB 1471 - the legislation that he signed on Monday.
It forbids state courts from enforcing “foreign or religious law” if doing so would violate constitutional rights, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
The legislation also enables the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Chief of Domestic Security to recommend the designation of domestic terrorist groups, and enables institutions found to promote or support terrorist organizations to be stripped of funding. Students who promote “terrorist violence” can also face disciplinary action.
Speaking to Hannity, he described the legislation as a “ban on any use of sharia law.”
“We don’t want to end up like Europe, where they have no-go zones, where you have these little subcultures where this stuff’s imposed,” he claimed.
In December, DeSantis wrote on X that his state would designate the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations as terrorist organizations.
U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker later declared in March that DeSantis’ designation of CAIR as a terrorist group violated the First Amendment.
Hiba Rahim, CAIR-Florida’s executive director, hit out at both HB 1471 and DeSantis’s executive order in a press release.
“We have already been unjustly targeted – most notably when Governor DeSantis falsely labeled CAIR as terrorists without lawful authority or evidence,” Rahim wrote.
“When HB 1471 was filed, it seemed clear that this was an agenda-driven bill.”
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