GOP Gov. Hogan Shreds DeSantis’s ‘Performative Politics’ on Immigration: Why Not ‘Fix the Problem Rather Than Trying to Get on TV’
Outgoing Maryland governor may be eying own presidential bid
It was Republican vs Republican this week, when the outgoing governor of Maryland blasted his Florida counterpart for the Floridian's stunt which involved transporting Venezuelan migrants to the remote island of Martha's Vineyard.
Florida Gov Ron DeSantis, a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, last month generated headlines — and outrage — by apparently lying to roughly 50 Venezuelan refugees to lure them onto private planes.
Members of the DeSantis team reportedly told the migrants that if they boarded the flights, they would be traveling to Boston to receive housing, employment and other assistance.
None of that was true, and it was all a cheap political stunt over the issue of immigration.
The migrants are now suing DeSantis and a sheriff in Bexar County, Texas — where the migrants originated — has opened a criminal probe.
The outgoing Republican governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, tore into DeSantis, while speaking at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics on Thursday.
Hogan, who is popular in his blue state, admonished the “performative politics” of DeSantis during his speech at a popular stomping ground for potential presidential candidates in the key primary state.
Some anti-Trump Republicans are pushing Hogan also to make a longshot bid for the party's presidential nomination. Hogan is term-limited and cannot run for reelection.
“I thought it was a mistake to, you know, basically, I think do publicity stunts of busing people out of from the border up to other states. And I said, ‘They were they put thousands of them in Washington, D.C., which is right next to my state.’ And I reminded my colleagues that we didn’t have Border Patrol at the Maryland-D.C. line and that they were dropping these thousands of folks in busses.
“They were crossing into my state and it was now a problem I had to deal with rather than them. And I know Governor DeSantis, who had nothing to do with the issue,” added Hogan, who has long been seen as an anti-Trump Republican. “After [Republican] Governor [Greg] Abbott was doing it in Texas, he went to Texas and basically, you know, grabbed 50 people and sent them to Martha’s Vineyard as a publicity stunt. And I think it was a terrible idea.
“Let’s just, you know, try to address the issue seriously and fix the problem rather than trying to get on TV. It’s back to what I was saying earlier about the performative politics. It’s not a serious discussion. It’s not a good solution,” the Maryland governor said.
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