CNN political commentator and co-host of ABC’s The View, Ana Navarro joined the former’s Wednesday election coverage to react to the results in her native Florida where Gov. Ron DeSantis easily won re-election by almost 20 points. For Navarro, the conventional wisdom about DeSantis is wrong because to get that massive win “he gamed the system” by creating “an unlevel playing field.”
As for the standard narrative coming out of Florida, host Erin Burnett summarized it as “Ron DeSantis is the king of Florida and has done what no one thought could be done.”
Navarro didn’t see what the big deal was, “Which I told you--which I told you-- yesterday was going to be the case. I told you he was going to win bigly.”
However, that is no reason to applaud him, “listen, Ron DeSantis barely won in 2018 by 35,000 votes by the skin of his teeth against a black progressive little known mayor from Tallahassee, Florida. It didn’t—yesterday he won by 20 percentage points? Why?”
The natural answer would be that 2018 was a good year for Democrats and that DeSantis has a solid record, but Navarro saw things in a different, more conspiratorial way, “Because he gamed the system. Because he turned Florida into an unlevel playing field. They changed election laws making it harder to vote by mail. They paraded a bunch of people, black people that they arrested for voting fraud and paraded them in front of national media. He created an election police.”
As Navarro continued, her answer got stranger, “He also was very good in responding to hurricanes and other tragedies, he also invested… He also laser focused on Miami-Dade.”
Burnett tried to interject with the point that good governance is “significant,” but Navarro kept rolling, “turnout was 10 points lower than it was in 2018, in 2018 it was 63 percent. Yesterday in Florida it was 53 percent. So that's not a red wave. Red wave is when people go out to the streets and vote. When you have-- what you had is a depressed, deflated vote, Democratic vote”
Again contradicting herself, Navarro conceded, “and who can blame them when you nominate a corpse. I mean, yes, he won bigly but he won against a corpse, a political corpse and that's an insult to corpses.”
Sounds like DeSantis won because of a combination of his own strengths and Democratic weakness, not gaming the system, but that Navarro just doesn’t want to admit it.
This segment was sponsored by Dove.
Hre3 is a transcript for the November 9 show:
CNN Election Day in America
11/9/2022
12:48 PM ET
ERIN BURNETT: So, hold on. Let me put a pause on it.
ANA NAVARRO: Oh, come on.
BURNETT: Ron DeSantis is the king of Florida and has done what no one thought could be done, that’s the narrative.
NAVARRO: Which I told you--which I told you-- yesterday was going to be the case.
BURNETT: Yes.
NAVARRO: I told you he was going to win bigly, but listen, Ron DeSantis barely won in 2018 by 35,000 votes by the skin of his teeth against a black progressive little known mayor from Tallahassee, Florida. It didn’t—yesterday he won by 20 percentage points? Why?
Because he gamed the system. Because he turned Florida into an unlevel playing field. They changed election laws making it harder to vote by mail. They paraded a bunch of people, black people that they arrested for voting fraud and paraded them in front of national media.
He created an election police. He also was very good in responding to hurricanes and other tragedies, he also invested—
BURNETT: Well, but that's a significant—but that’s significant.
NAVARRO: He also laser focused on Miami-Dade—
BURNETT: But you're saying -- turnout, turnout.
NAVARRO: In the meantime-- turnout was 10 points lower than it was in 2018, in 2018 it was 63 percent. Yesterday in Florida it was 53 percent. So that's not a red wave. Red wave is when people go out to the streets and vote. When you have-- what you had is a depressed, deflated vote, Democratic vote and who can blame them when you nominate a corpse. I mean, yes, he won bigly but he won against a corpse, a political corpse and that's an insult to corpses.
