Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is becoming known for his intolerance of mainstream media nonsense and “gotcha” questioning, showed his ire once again to a reporter over a question about President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation operation against anyone in the country illegally, starting with known criminal aliens. During a question-and-answer session on Friday as to how Trump’s policies pertained to the Sunshine State, DeSantis interrupted a reporter to correct his description of migrants who have illegally crossed into the country.
“I have four questions. Florida is home to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who are working in areas — ” the reporter began before the governor quickly cut him off. “You know the federal government has made clear that the statutory term, it’s not ‘undocumented,’ they’re ‘illegal aliens.’ That’s the statutory term, that’s what it is.
“To try to water down — I mean like, ‘undocumented,’ it’s like if I get in my car and I forget my wallet, OK, I don’t have my document on me like my driver’s license, but I mean I still have a right to drive. I just made a mistake,” DeSantis continued. “This is intentional, to come in illegally. It’s not just a question of missing a document, it’s a question of you violated the law, very clearly and knowingly, and with the help of the cartels, in many cases.”
“So I’ll rephrase that,” the reporter began again. “So, Florida is home to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants — who are illegal aliens, if you wanna call it — who are working in areas of agriculture, farming, construction, and hospitality. I’m just wondering, once we start to see significant roundups of these people, is there a plan in place to help those industries, to prevent those industries from experiencing true hard hardship, financial hardship?”
DeSantis was ready for the typical Democrat talking point question of ‘Who will pick our crops?’ — the same issue that Democrats in the South used to justify slavery. “So here’s what I’d say they, they made the same arguments in 2023 when we did our immigration, Cayenne wrote, we did E-Verify. Now, in any of those industries, when they hire new people, they’ve got to verify their immigration status — otherwise, they can’t work,” he said.
? OMG. This reporter just called illegals “undocumented,” DeSantis corrected him, and the reporter re-phrased the question because of it.
REPORTER: Florida has hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants-
GOVERNOR DESANTIS: -The statutory term, per the Trump… pic.twitter.com/9nKkptj1kq
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 23, 2025
