DeSantis vs. Weingarten on Twitter over "book banning" lies

It's suspected that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will run in the 2024 presidential primary where he will face off with former President Donald Trump. There's no question amongst GOPers that he would make a good, if not great candidate but Trump's popularity in the party is quite high so that would be a high hurdle for DeSantis to get over.

Anyway, the governor has been accused by liars and the low information left, that DeSantis lied about his anti-woke school policies, which, I repeat, are simply not true.

The head of America's Federation of Teachers, the second largest teacher's union in the country, is the woke Randi Weingarten. She shared a video of DeSantis who claims that the mainstream [i.e., left leaning] media is perpetuating a "hoax" by statoing that his Florida's public school policies constitute book banning.

Sleepy-face Weingarten suggested that DeSantis was lying and covering up the fact that indeed, book banning was taking place in the Sunshine State. She showed the video on Saturday consisting of a clip of DeSantis defending Florida's Department of Education (DOE) decision to pull explicit LGBTQ material from libraries that "10 year-olds can access." Somehow the Left believes that children should be able to access that information, just like the Left believes kids should be allowed to "transition" to the opposite gender without telling their parents.

The video clip cites Florida "standards" that permit the state DOE the power to do such a removal of that material, and expressed the governor's belief that "99% of parents" would agree with such a measure by removing those books from children's library shelves if they didn't believe the media that misleads them.

The way the media has attacked DeSantis is to imply that he wants to ban all books that are disagreeable to conservatives. This, of course, is nonsense. He was very clear in his messaging and only wanted specifically 'woke' books that are not appropriate for children to be removed from the shelves. But he noted that the mainstream media has characterized such a move as "book banning," and calls this a "book ban hoax."

DeSantis also mentioned how MSNBC made the claim that the Florida DOE forced a public school African Studies class to drop its woke agenda, characterizing this as the DeSantis administration "outlawing the study of slavery." More nonsense which he blasted as false, "Well if you actually looked at what our standards are, not only is it not prohibited, it’s required to teach that."

But Weingarten never lets facts interfere with her messaging. She commented on the video that DeSantis is lying about what he's doing, as her own teacher's union shovels millions to the DNC.

The union boss tweeted:

"[Question]: Did Fla teachers complain of book banning before DeSantis started his ‘anti woke’ crusade? Did we see pictures of tarps over classroom libraries? Were teachers threatened with felonies if they used the ‘wrong’ book? [Answer]: No. Now that he is being exposed. Now it’s a hoax."

But Weingarten removed the ability for users to reply directly to her post. Though prominent members of DeSantis’ staff, along with other conservative users were quick to call out Weingarten via retweet, accusing her of perpetuating the false narrative that DeSantis is embarking on a right-wing book-banning crusade. 

This only proves Weingarten is not very social media savvy. 

DeSantis Transition Team Co-Chair Scott Wagner went after Weingarten’s post, tweeting:

 "1. @GovRonDeSantis empowered parents to complain about porn in school books. 2. Teacher unions put tarps so they don’t have to face reality. 3. Any adult for decades is subject to felony for showing pornography to children. 4. Turning off replies is the move of a coward."

At least when Joe Biden tweets, he doesn't disable replies to the posts, but it's also possible he forgot to do that.

DeSantis Press Secretary Bryan Griffin slammed the union boss, tweeting:

"And yet, the law that criminalizes the distribution of pornography to minors has been on the books for decades. It's as if there's a national group of activists who claim to be for education but instead amplify fake scenarios and false narratives for political gain."

DeSantis Deputy Press Secretary Jeremy Redfern shared a screenshot of drawings from one of the explicit books Weingarten accused DeSantis of banning. He captioned the inappropriate drawings, saying, "This is the type of book that Randi wants to provide to your elementary-aged child."

Journalist Jim Treacher turned Weingarten’s point around on her, replying, "Did they complain about book banning before you started falsely claiming this is book banning?

But the pithiest response was by Brendon Leslie, founder of local news outlet, Florida’s Voice News, who asked, "Why does the teachers union want to keep pornographic books in our schools?"

Maybe because it's yet another way the Left can make the rules and grab the power. Boys can be girls. Girls can be boys. People can be plural in their pronouns. Socialism is the new black.

The far left is mentally ill.

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