Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott both officially jumped into the 2024 presidential race this month and were greeted with nasty jabs from the leftist media.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid labeled DeSantis a “toy-sized Mussolini” who wants to “micromanage every aspect of your life.” Her MSNBC colleague Chris Hayes compared the Florida governor to Joseph Stalin and warned he is “running on an authoritarian agenda.”
Senator Scott was repeatedly attacked on ABC’s The View. The South Carolina senator had his authenticity questioned by co-host Joy Behar as she complained Scott’s “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” success shows he really “doesn’t get” the true black-American experience. Co-host Sunny Hostin whined that Scott suffered from “Clarence Thomas syndrome.”
The following are some of the worst attacks against DeSantis, Scott and other conservatives from the month of May:
“Toy-Sized Mussolini” DeSantis Will Usher in “Stalin” Like “Totalitarianism”
“Presidential candidate and toy-sized [Benito] Mussolini Ron DeSantis unveils his authoritarian manifesto, vowing to destroy leftism and wokeism….If he’s elected President, the federal government….would micromanage every aspect of your life….He’s going to need some de facto morality police to monitor what you read and ban books….You want to control your body anymore, ladies? No, Chairman — sorry, President DeSantis is going to do that. And there is a model for what he wants to do. Just look at China, Cuba, North Korea, Afghanistan, or Iran where the government censors the media or force feeds a strict religious ideology to children in schools, deploys morality police…That model also happens to have a name. And it’s called totalitarianism.”
— Host Joy Reid on MSNBC’s The ReidOut, May 30.
“The discussion about the threat of authoritarianism can feel sometimes a little remote or academic. That word has a certain kind of historical timbre with it. We associate with, like, stern historical figures like [Joseph] Stalin or [Benito] Mussolini and that can make it hard to look at Mr. Pudding Fingers yukking it up on the campaign trail in Iowa and see an authoritarian. But Ron DeSantis really is running on an authoritarian agenda. The policies he has enacted in Florida are the opposite of freedom.”
— Host Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s All In, May 18.
NAACP’s “Bold” Statement Has Gayle King Fearing for Her Sisters in DeSantis’s Florida
“NAACP has made a move — a travel advisory from the State of Florida after several issues, against ‘the other,’ if you will, from Governor Ron DeSantis. And they’re saying that the hate that is coming out of this political season is dangerous. What do you say to what the NAACP has done? I mean, they’re following behind other groups, be it groups on race, on LGBTQ+, but they’re making a bold statement. What do you say to that?”
— The Grio’s White House correspondent/MSNBC contributor April Ryan at May 23 White House Press Briefing.
“The NAACP has issued a travel advisory for Florida. It says the state is, quote, ‘openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals’ due to a series of measures recently signed by Governor Ron DeSantis….I keep thinking about the black people that live there. I actually have two sisters that live in Florida, what this means for people who live there or people of color who are planning to go to Florida….It’s very unsettling to me on many levels.”
— Co-host Gayle King on CBS Mornings, May 23.
DeSantis and Musk Together? Everybody Run!
“Report: Ron DeSantis Will Formally Announce His 2024 Bid With Elon Musk, Because Apparently David Duke Wasn’t Available”
— Headline to May 23 Vanity Fair article.
“Should Black People Be Afraid Now that Ron DeSantis Plans to Announce His Presidential Bid... On Twitter? DeSantis is apparently set to make the announcement on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk.”
— Headline to May 23 The Root.com article.
Worried About IRS Expanding? You Must Be a Tax Cheat
“I have never understood the resistance of extra IRS agents unless you knowingly cheat on your taxes.”
— Moderator Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, May 21.
Refusing to Admit They Were Wrong on Russia Collusion, Diminish Durham Instead
“The only good news is at least his four-year taxpayer funded boondoggle, that was funded by working Americans, paying him to walk through the fevered swamps of Trumpism is over and [John] Durham has nothing but a tarnished reputation to show for it….Four years of nothing and now, we have Durham publishing another dud.”
— Host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, May 16.
“Taliban” Republicans “Want Total Control Over Women”
“The thing about Republicans now is that they are acting in a very Talibanesque way. They are a religious group of extremists who — they definitely don’t care about children. They want to control women. They want total control over women. And they are exercising that control. Let’s put up the map — all across the former slave states and in states in the West that they control, while women have no power to stop them….and then these women wake up in a country — in a state where they have no rights.”
— Host Joy Reid on MSNBC’s The ReidOut, May 17.
Anderson Cooper After CNN Hosted Trump: “You Have Every Right to….Never Watch This Network Again”
“I want to say something about what we witnessed at last night’s town hall. Many of you have expressed deep anger and disappointment. Many of you are upset that someone [Former President Donald Trump] who attempted to destroy our democracy was invited to sit on a stage in front of a crowd of Republican voters to answer questions, and predictably, continued to spew lie after lie after lie. And I get it. It was disturbing….You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again.”
— Host Anderson Cooper on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, May 11.
Opposition to ObamaCare in 2010 Was “Anti-Black”
“In 2010, there was a Tea Party rally at the Capitol. Do you have a sense from listening to that rally and the people there that they were as much interested in being anti-black as they were anti-Obamacare?”
— Host David Rubenstein to Rep. James Clyburn in PBS documentary Iconic America: Our Symbols and Stories with David Rubenstein: The Gadsden Flag, May 10.
Guest Exposes Gayle’s Bias
Host Gayle King: “Let’s start with you, E. Jean. You have never wavered over these years, the jury came back for many people surprisingly fast. What did you think when you heard their decision?”
E. Jean Carroll, Donald Trump accuser: “I had the exact reaction you just had before the camera came on. You said when you heard it, you went, ‘hooray.’ That’s how I felt inside. Every blood vessel in my body jumped up with a complete and utter joy. It was a wonderful feeling.”
— CBS Mornings, May 10.
The View: Senator Tim Scott and Justice Clarence Thomas Don’t “Get” What Being Black Is About
“And he’s [Sen. Tim Scott] one of these guys, you know, he’s like Clarence Thomas, black Republican, who believes in pull yourself by your bootstraps, rather than, to me, understanding the systemic racism that African Americans face in this country and other minorities. He doesn't get it. Neither does Clarence. And that’s why they’re Republicans.”
— Co-host Joy Behar on ABC’s The View, May 23.
Co-host Sunny Hostin: “One of the issues that Tim Scott has is that he seems to think ‘because I made it everyone can make it.’ Ignoring, again, the fact that he is the exception and not the rule. And until he is the rule then he can stop talking about systemic racism.”
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg: “He’s got Clarence Thomas Syndrome. That’s what it is.”
— ABC’s The View, May 22.
Shaming CNN for Giving “Racist” “Misogynist” “Cheater” Trump a Platform
“I think that you don’t give a bigot and a racist and a misogynist and a liar and a cheater and a sexual abuser and a defamer a platform [CNN Townhall] of three million people….We know who this man [Donald Trump] is. We learned who this man is and we did not need to see what we saw. I think that that town hall will be studied in journalism schools around the country as to what not to do. It was not fact-checked appropriately.”
— Co-host Sunny Hostin on ABC’s The View, May 12.
White Republican Women are Protecting the “Patriarchy”
“I think that women, white women in particular, want to protect the patriarchy here, because it’s to their benefit. They want to make sure that their husbands do well. They want to make sure that their sons do well. They want to make sure that their children do well. And they want to make sure that they do well. Most of the women in some of these studies are married white women and they do fall in line with what their husbands are doing, what their husbands are voting….I think with white female Republicans, you have a Republican Party that is taking away your health right to decide for yourself. You have all of these things that are against women.”
— Co-host Sunny Hostin on ABC’s The View, May 30.
Time to “Arrest” the “White Men” for Causing “Climate Crisis”
“We’ve got about seven, eight years to cut ourselves in half of what we use of fossil fuels, and unfortunately, the people that have the least responsibility for it are hit the hardest….People on islands, poor people of color. It is a tragedy that we have to absolutely stop. We have to arrest and jail those men — they’re all men [behind this]....There would be no climate crisis if there was no racism. There would be no climate crisis if there was no patriarchy. A mindset that sees things in a hierarchical way. White men are the things that matter and then everything else [is] at the bottom.”
— Actress/activist Jane Fonda during a May 27 conversation at the Cannes Film Festival.
Tell Us How You Really Feel
“I’m sorry to have to say this. I’m sorry for my language. But. I fuckin hate these motherf*king Republicans. Every last one. F*ck them one and all.”
— May 22 tweet by actress Ellen Barkin. On May 23, The Washington Times reported “Ms. Barkin didn’t specify what caused Monday’s outburst, though her feed Monday and Tuesday contained a lot of retweets denouncing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for one thing or another.”
