OAN’s Brooke Mallory
4:53 PM – Monday, July 10, 2023
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis defended his wife Casey on Monday after left-wing critics derisively referred to her as “America’s Karen” over the weekend.
“My wife is an incredibly strong first lady of Florida, a fantastic mother, and a great wife, and that threatens the left,” DeSantis, 44, told Fox.
MSNBC commentator David Jolly, a former GOP congressman from Florida, threw the “Karen” insult at the breast cancer survivor and mother of three over the weekend during a program on the channel’s “Saturday Show with Jonathan Capehart.”
“Casey DeSantis is a fairly compelling political figure in Florida and now nationally. For many, she’s the brighter side to Florida’s angry governor. For others, she’s become America’s Karen,” Jolly said during the segment, prompting laughs and smirks from the other panelists.
In recent years, the term “Karen” has turned into slang, referring to White women who are high maintenance, entitled, and extremely neurotic.
Casey DeSantis started the “Mamas for DeSantis” project in Iowa last week, launching the project with a short video depicting the Florida governor as a fighter.
Her speech emphasized some of the same themes that DeSantis has advocated for as governor, such as parental rights in the education system.
“She’s a great advocate for families, a great advocate for children. And I’m thankful that she’s my wife,” DeSantis said on Monday. “And I’m really honored that she’s willing to go out there and press the case. And so we wear criticism from MSNBC as a badge of honor.”
The 2024 Republican candidate claimed that the attacks on his wife were motivated by leftist fears that her message of parental empowerment would connect with voters, gaining him more popularity.
“She and I kind of shrug it off because we know it just shows they view her as a threat, because the message that she was bringing in Iowa about the rights of parents and how we are not going to take this anymore with the left trying to indoctrinate our kids, they understand that that resonates not just with Republican parents, with independent parents, and yes, with Democrat parents,” he said.
The Florida governor is largely regarded as Donald Trump’s primary opponent in the 2024 Republican primary, however, he is still trailing by a wide margin behind the former president.
DeSantis dismissed the polling disparity, claiming that he is the “one who is being targeted by the media.”
“I think it’s pretty clear that the media does not want me to be the candidate,” he said. “I think they have tried to create a narrative that somehow the race is over. This is going to be a state-by-state contest. We have worked really hard to build the type of organization in places like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina that you need to actually be able to win these early contests. And we are going to continue doing that. We have got a lot of work, but we have had a very, very favorable response, and we’re going to keep building off that momentum.”
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