‘Bend the Knee’?

This is doing the rounds:

As it turns out, this isn’t a recent photograph of Governor DeSantis and President Biden; it’s from their meeting last year, after the collapse of the condo down in Surfside. But forget that for a moment, and ask yourself, “What, exactly, is Tom Watson saying here?”

President Biden is the temporary head of the executive branch of the American federal government. He is not an emperor. His job, as defined in the Constitution, is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” The idea that a state governor who wishes to use emergency funds that Congress has explicitly allocated for that purpose would have to “bend the knee” in order to obtain them is grotesque and fascistic. The laws of the United States do not create a federal slush fund that the president can condescend to dole out if he happens to like the governor who has requested help, and nor do they require those governors to like, agree with, or be polite to the incumbent president. There is nothing hypocritical — or even interesting — about Governor DeSantis’s working with the federal government in the area of disaster relief, and there is nothing hypocritical — or even interesting — about Joe Biden’s working with Governor DeSantis. Both men are doing their jobs.

The term “banana republic” is thrown around far too much in our politics, but, if this were the way it all worked, then we would, indeed, live in one. Evidently, Tom Watson believes that we do. Thankfully, President Biden and Governor DeSantis — both of whom have done a good job here — do not.