He doesn’t recall…
Where was Ron DeSantis on 9/11?
A new spot from the Lincoln Project contends that you wouldn’t have a good answer based on the Governor’s fumbling response in a recent friendly longform interview with Piers Morgan.
DeSantis was beginning his year teaching at the Darlington School in Rome, Georgia when the terrorist attacks that changed America were orchestrated. But those who listened to the Morgan interview would have had no clue that he was shaping some of Georgia’s brightest minds on that dark day.
“I think I’d just graduated college and I didn’t have a care in the world and all of a sudden, Boom. You know, it happened,” DeSantis said.
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson offered explanatory excoriation of the Governor’s gaffe as being of a piece with recent missteps as he continues to move toward a run for the Republican Presidential nomination.
“Every American knows where they were on 9/11, and though he refuses to say it, we know Ron DeSantis was teaching at the elite Darlington school in Georgia on that day. Why he refused to answer has left America questioning his honesty,” Wilson said.
“The Piers Morgan interview was the cherry on top of one of the worst rollouts of a Presidential candidate in decades. In a week where his main rival is terrified he’s about to be arrested, DeSantis actually managed to come out worse. Flip flops, bad policy, and a terrible interview that reached Mudd-Kennedy proportions gave American and his increasingly nervous donors a view of a candidate who is unready, unsteady, and evasive. Ron should stick to fighting with cartoon mice, because he’s not ready for a banking crisis or a war in Europe,” Wilson added.
That is a very strange answer. Everyone remembers where they were when they heard. And we know that DeSantis was teaching high school at the time.
It’s also very weird that he never mentions that he was once a teacher, not even in passing in his book, considering that education is one of his top issues and he’s positioned himself as the arbiter of what can be taught. You’d think his stint as a teacher would be something he’d tout as giving him credibility on the subject. But he doesn’t. In fact, he goes to some lengths to hide it.
Why?
Elon Musk’s Twitter added this to that tweet:
Provides important context · Directly addresses the Tweet’s claim
The video is intentionally edited to cut out the context. DeSantis is answering where he was in his life at the time because 9/11 had led him to give up a potentially high-paying job to instead serve in the Navy. Full clip: https://youtu.be/vIj4LUPlgKc?t=1541
Go ahead and look at the youtube if you want to see how ridiculous that is. There was a back and forth before that question about 9/11 but the question itself was straightforward: “where were you on 9/11” and he didn’t answer. Period. It’s clear that he was obfuscating and tryjng to pretend that he was just hanging out after law school and then decided to join the navy. But he was teaching at that prep school for a year. And he won’t mention it. Why???