California governor Gavin Newsom told the Sacramento Bee that he showed up on television screens in Florida because his equivalent in the Sunshine State, Ron DeSantis, had done “something that tipped me very directly, and that was going after the Special Olympics.”
“I had an emotional response to that,” explained Newsom, whose ad buy was interpreted as a sign of his interest in the 2024 presidential race. But no, he protested, it was just his way of doing something “a little bit more expressive” in opposition to DeSantis’s attack on the Special Olympics. That is, after all, a heinous thing to do — tantamount to an attack on the Special Olympians themselves, right?
No.
DeSantis did threaten to fine the Special Olympics International for mandating that participating athletes be vaccinated against Covid-19 at its 2022 USA Games in Orlando, but that wasn’t out of malice toward the spirit of the event, but affinity for it. According to local media, DeSantis’s threat resulted not just in the Special Olympics relaxing their requirement, but in the participation of a hundred more athletes in the Games from Florida alone.
DeSantis did, in fact pick a fight with the Special Olympics. But as he explained in a recent interview, it was one he fought on behalf of Special Olympians.
BREAKING: @RonDeSantisFL responds to Gavin Newsom’s comments calling him a “bully” in an exclusive interview with @FLVoiceNews
“This is a guy [Newsom] that locked people down, that kept kids out of school” pic.twitter.com/SP0QYuNgq7
— Brendon Leslie (@BrendonLeslie) July 19, 2022