Opinion DeSantis’s flop on foreign affairs comes as no surprise
This week, he began a national tour in New York City, presumably to tout his record on crime. In the minds of MAGA Republicans, crime is about not just public safety but also elites’ irresponsibility and the culture wars. DeSantis blamed New York’s bail laws “on Democrats trying to ‘out-woke’ each other,” as the New York Daily News reported. It’s far from clear what he means in this context by “out-woke” — a slur usually deployed to intimate that Democrats are catering to minorities and ignoring Whites’ legitimate concerns.
Regardless, any comparison between Florida and New York does not serve DeSantis well. In 2020, the homicide rate in Florida was 5.9 murders per 100,000 people, and the violent crime rate was 384 per 100,000, according to the Daily Beast, citing the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. New York, meanwhile, had 4.2 homicides per 100,000 people and a violent crime rate of 364 per 100,000 people. New York City itself had a homicide rate of 5.6 per 100,000, slightly below the national average of 6.5 and half Miami’s rate of 12.8.
Meanwhile, DeSantis has wasted police resources on his election-crimes unit, whose cases have led to three dismissals and serious questions about whether other cases will ever come to trial.
Predictably, Eric Adams, New York’s law-and-order mayor, blasted DeSantis. “Welcome to NYC, @GovRonDeSantis, a place where we don’t ban books, discriminate against our LGBTQ+ neighbors, use asylum seekers as props, or let the government stand between a woman and health care,” he tweeted.
DeSantis’s crime foray, however, was not his worst moment on tour. At the moment President Biden was getting plaudits for venturing into a war-torn country to stand with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, DeSantis pandered to pro-Russian apologists.
“The fear of Russia going into NATO countries and all that and steamrolling, you know, that has not even come close to happening,” he said in an interview, neglecting to mention that it hasn’t happened because of the heroic efforts of Ukrainians and the alliance Biden stitched together. DeSantis went on, saying of Russia: “I think they’ve shown themselves to be a third-rate military power.” The third-rate power nevertheless has committed countless atrocities and devastated the economy and landscape of Ukraine.
DeSantis then reverted to an America First talking point about Biden: “He’s very concerned about those borders halfway around the world. He’s not done anything to secure our own border here at home.” In over his head, he muddled along: “And I don’t think it’s in our interest to be getting into proxy war with China, getting involved over things like the borderlands or over Crimea.”
Next he declared, “I think it would behoove them to identify what is the strategic objective that they’re trying to achieve, but just saying it’s an open-ended blank check, that is not acceptable.” The objective is a free and independent Ukraine without Russian troops, obviously.
Perhaps Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — who told the Munich Security Conference that “Republican leaders are committed to a strong transatlantic alliance” and that “America’s own core national interests are at stake” — could help the governor understand.
DeSantis might be utterly uninformed on foreign policy, or he might be pandering to the MAGA base. Regardless, his tone-deaf, reflexive know-nothingism should set off alarms for Republicans. If they want to restore the party’s image as tough on national security and find someone to make Biden look feeble, they might want to look elsewhere.
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