The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, brought his act to Pittsburgh on Friday and left little doubt that he’s running for president in 2024. We need to talk about this, but first, let’s look at the even more revealing event that DeSantis staged right before he boarded the jet for his Rust Belt road swing — a full-on display of what 21st-century American fascism looks like.
In heavily Democratic Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the 5-foot-9 DeSantis — the modern fulfillment of the Jimmy Breslin-ism about a small man in search of a balcony — elevated himself on a podium, flanked as he so often is by armed and uniformed men and women of law enforcement, to highlight his crackdown on supposed voter fraud ahead of November’s election.
“That is against the law, and now they’re gonna pay the price for it,” DeSantis declared of 20 Floridians — almost all from Democratic strongholds such as Broward County, where his campaign rally-style announcement was staged, or Miami-Dade County — accused of casting ballots despite a law barring them because they’d been convicted of murder or sexual assault.
