(The Hill) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had a heated exchange at a press conference Thursday with an audience member who said the governor was responsible for the recent racist shooting in Jacksonville that left three Black people dead.
Speaking from the audience, an unidentified man accused DeSantis of enacting policies “that hurt people like myself and the people that I love,” including his children.
“You have allowed weapons to fill the street into immature, hateful people that have caused the deaths of the people who were murdered a few weeks ago,” the man said.
Then as the man began to speak of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old Black boy who was fatally shot in Sanford, Fla., by George Zimmerman in 2012, DeSantis interrupted him.
“I did not allow anything with that,” DeSantis said.
The man then tried to interrupt DeSantis, telling the presidential hopeful to “let me finish,” but DeSantis once again cut him off.
“I’m not going to let you accuse me of committing criminal activity,” DeSantis said as audience members began to clap. “I am not going to take that.”
DeSantis said that the gunman who opened fire at a Dollar General store Aug. 27 should have been “Baker Acted,” referring to a Florida law that allows for family members to involuntary institutionalize an individual in light of a mental health crisis.
“He should have been ruled ineligible,” DeSantis said. “But they didn’t involuntarily commit him.”
The man tried to respond to DeSantis, demanding he be allowed to finish his point, but DeSantis once again interrupted him.
“There is the truth. There is something about the truth. It’s not — everyone doesn’t have their own truth,” DeSantis said.
The unidentified audience member accused DeSantis of allowing “people to hunt people like me,” for which DeSantis vehemently rejected as “nonsense” before he launched into an explanation of the state’s support of law enforcement.
DeSantis, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, has faced backlash from Black lawmakers both in his state and at the federal level for the Jacksonville shooting.
Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon issued a scathing rebuke of DeSantis’s response following the shooting, and the Congressional Black Caucus and other leading Black leaders said the shooting was motivated by anti-Black legislation.
At the end of the press conference, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who is Black, said the man who argued with DeSantis on Thursday was “totally insane.”
“It’s terrible that people take advantage of the fact that he’s a different color from the poor victims of that tragedy to try and tie him into it,” Ladapo said, according to Politico.
