Ron DeSantis, who is literally a sour grape wearing ridiculous boot heels so he’ll look taller, has never met a cause to which he could not pander with some shameless and useless stunt that garners him positive headlines for 30 seconds before everyone remembers that he’s the most exceptionally thirsty, self-promoting weasel dick running for president in a field that includes such exceptionally thirsty, self-promoting weasel dicks as Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie.
Nativists screaming about border security and undocumented immigrants? Check. Whiny shitheads upset they might have to wear surgical masks if they want to get on a cruise ship at the height of a worldwide pandemic? Check. Conservatives’ unrelenting belief that Israel must be helped unconditionally in bombing and invading the Gaza Strip, lest not doing so somehow sets back the onset of the Rapture?
DeSantis and his spokestoadies have been bragging about the Florida governor’s apparent effort to pretend he is the Viktor Bout of Tallahassee or something, sending planeloads of military supplies to help Israel in its efforts to make Gaza look like Dresden on February 16. And he might have gotten away with it too, if Israeli government officials hadn’t said “Hey, wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute, Squinty.”
From The Guardian:
His boast, however, started to unravel when Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, Israel’s consul general, told the news agency he had not asked for DeSantis’s help, and that the governor’s involvement was limited to smoothing paperwork requirements for a previously arranged shipment of “rifle parts” ordered by his government.
Before the unraveling, DeSantis claimed he worked with Elbaz-Starinsky and the Israeli government to ship the nation drones, body armor, helmets, weapons and ammunition. It is unclear where all this alleged military gear was supposed to have come from. Presumably some Florida National Guard armory. Or possibly the cops just raided a couple of meth labs somewhere.
The governor’s office had also been sending out press releases proudly announcing he had sent 85 pallets of supplies to Israel that had allegedly been “requested by hospitals,” all of which presumably have not been flattened by Israeli JDAMs. Tough luck for the Gazans, but Ron DeSantis is running in a Republican primary and those voters are very, very racist and what’s he supposed to do anyway, acknowledge a humanitarian disaster?
Elbaz-Starinsky told the Herald that all necessary approvals for the rifle parts requested by Israel had been obtained, but said he was not certain it was DeSantis’s office that helped secure them. […]
“I approached a few contacts, including the governor’s office, to get the final approval. It went through all the process. I’m not even sure, at the end of the day, which one untangled this thing and made the shipment be approved.”
And this is before you get to the fact that a governor can’t just ship weapons overseas. There are rules and regulations, which the federal government deals with. Come on, Ron DeSantis wasn’t that young when Iran-Contra happened.
At best, DeSantis the big hero, or more likely someone in his office, might have helped slash some bureaucratic red tape to get these “rifle parts” off to Israel. One of the spokestoadies tried to clarify without apparent acknowledgement that he had lied in the hope he might give his boss the governor a bump from nine to 10 percent in the polls:
Jeremy Redfern, the governor’s press secretary, told Reuters DeSantis “was contacted by the consul general’s office for assistance to clear federal bureaucratic hurdles associated with getting those items to Israel”.
Congrats, your place at God’s right hand after the final battle and the rapturing of good Christian souls to heaven is assured.
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