DeSantis sneers & spews lies in a campaign ad filmed in San Francisco

In a new campaign ad, Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, says that “leftist policies” have caused the “once great city of San Francisco” to “collapse.”

While the one-minute ad is intended to inspire disgust towards one of America’s most liberal cities, it overlooks all the problems facing Florida.

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Ron DeSantis’s legal crusades are costing Florida taxpayers millions… and he’s not stopping

Experts say this is by design.

“We’re here in the once great city of San Francisco,” DeSantis says at the start of the video, wearing a collared button-up shirt while standing on a trashed out street corner with graffiti on a nearby wall.

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He then says that, during his visit, he and his team saw “people defecating on the street,” “people using heroin, people smoking crack cocaine,” “many businesses boarded up,” and “riffraff just running around.”

“The city is not vibrant anymore,” DeSantis said. “It’s really collapsed because of leftist policies.”

“It just shows you these policies matter. Leadership matters,” he continued. “They are doing it wrong here. No wonder why we’ve had so many people move from San Francisco to Florida over the last few years. We got to stop this madness. We need to restore sanity to this country.”

If DeSantis’ comment about restoring “sanity” sounds familiar, it’s a common refrain in his campaign rhetoric. Similarly, he said he wanted to make Florida “a citadel of normalcy” while signing numerous anti-LGBTQ+ bills into law in May.

Florida has a higher rate of drug overdoses per capita and a lower life expectancy than California, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

DeSantis’ ad can also be understood as a criticism of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). Newsom has repeatedly publicly criticized DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law and referred to DeSantis as a “bully” who demeans and talks down to people.

“You’re attacking the LGBT community, you’re attacking women… Ron DeSantis? Talks about freedom? And a young girl who is raped by her father doesn’t have a right to her own body to make her own decision? Spare me, freedom. There’s no freedom, there’s no choice,” Newsom said of DeSantis in August 2022.

In a July 2022 ad, Newsom told Floridians, “Freedom: it’s under attack in your state. Your Republican leaders: they’re banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors.”

In response to that ad, DeSantis campaign spokesman Dave Abrams said, “Gavin Newsom might as well light a pile of cash on fire. Pass the popcorn for his desperate attempt to win back the California refugees who fled the hellhole he created in his state to come to Florida.”

As of June 2023, “the Census Bureau’s latest data showed that per capita, more Floridians moved to California than the other way around in 2021,” Politifact reported.