By Raul Castillo
29 Oct 2023, 18:15 PM EDT
The governor of Florida and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Ron DeSantis, defended this Sunday his call to ban pro-Palestinian groups from state universities. “That’s not cancel culture,” he said.
DeSantis made the remarks after his Republican opponent and one of his closest pursuers, Vivek Ramaswamy, tweeted: “It’s a shameful political ploy… It’s unconstitutional. “It’s complete hypocrisy for someone who criticized left-wing cancel culture.”
In an exclusive interview on “Meet the Press” with NBC News’ Kristen Welker, the Florida governor rejected Ramaswamy’s comments:
“This group, they themselves said, after the Hamas attack, that they are not only in solidarity, that they are part of this Hamas movement,” he said, according to NBC News. “And so, yes, you have the right to go out and demonstrate, but you cannot provide material support to terrorism.”
According to DeSantis, these pro-Palestinian university groups are linked to Hamas.
“And that’s why we completely decertified them. They should not receive a single red cent of taxpayers’ money,” she added. “And we also have strict laws in Florida against fundraising for groups like Hamas, and we are vigorously enforcing them. It’s not a First Amendment issue. That is material support for the problem of terrorism,” NBC News quoted him as saying.
Anti-Semitic laws
During the interview, Welker asked DeSantis if he has evidence to show that pro-Palestinian groups actually provide material support or resources to a terrorist organization, as he asserted last week when he proposed banning these groups.
“Their own words say that they are part of this organization, that they not only show solidarity, that they not only support what they did, but that this is also their movement,” responded the governor and presidential candidate.
“So once you join a group like Hamas, that takes you out of the realm of normal activity, and that’s something we’re going to take action against,” he added, according to NBC News. “That is why we believe that we are totally justified within the law.”
Additionally, according to the outlet, DeSantis reaffirmed that the United States should not accept refugees from Gaza, claiming that not all of them are affiliated with Hamas but that they are all “anti-Semitic.”
Terrorist attack
The Florida governor’s statements come just after a controversial act in which he stated that irregular immigration could facilitate a terrorist attack in the United States.
“There will be a terrorist attack in this country that we will be able to trace back to someone who crosses the border,” DeSantis said.
“Things like terrorism are still very real. It is even more real when you have an open border that almost eight million people have crossed,” the Florida governor continued. “You don’t think our enemies are exploring that border?”
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