Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass continues to take fire for visiting Ghana during her city’s devastating wildfires, including from a Florida leader who himself took heat for a political trip during a once in a 1,000 year flood event in a South Florida city in 2023.
“You’re the Mayor of LA, massive city, and this is a dire threat to your city. And you know five days out this could happen and you leave, and that’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever seen,” Gov. Ron DeSantis told Mark Levin.
DeSantis went on to say that a move to recall the Democratic chief executive would be justified.
“It’d be akin to me seeing a storm in the Gulf of Mexico that may be coming to Florida six days out and deciding to what? Go to France or something and leave the area? That’s the time you got to be there and you got to be offering support. And some of it is you actually have to be meeting with people, you got to be working the phone, you got to be doing all that, issuing the orders,” DeSantis said.
Nearly two years ago, however, DeSantis took criticism for a campaign trip to Ohio — where he ultimately did not even appear before voters in the 2024 presidential race after he withdrew following the Iowa caucuses — while historic floods hit Fort Lauderdale.
“Fort Lauderdale is under water and DeSantis is campaigning in Ohio right now instead of taking care of the people suffering in his state,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X.
“Governor DeSantis has not yet called,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said.
The Florida Governor, addressing the Butler County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner on April 13, 2023, said during that trip that he represented so-called “Ohio values.”
“I can stand here representing Ohio values because the two most important women in my life (are from Ohio),” DeSantis said. “My mother is from Youngstown, and my wife is from Troy, and so my family reflects your family.”
He also participated in a policy roundtable about election security, went to First Lady Casey DeSantis’ elementary school, and to what Fox News called her “favorite burger joint.”
The DeSantis of 2025 clearly doesn’t endorse what the DeSantis of 2023 did, based on his comments about Bass’ failed crisis management.
“Part of it is you just got to be out there informing the public about what’s going on, the preparations that are going to be made. And when people see that, when they see that you have a command of the situation, it lowers the anxiety level. People are able to make good decisions about what they need to do to protect themselves and their family,” he told Levin.
The political travel continued that week for DeSantis, though he did come to the state to sign the Heartbeat Protection Act banning abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy late at night. He went to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he talked to Liberty University students, and to Manchester, New Hampshire.
His Granite State speech was besieged by protesters.
Ultimately, he left the race before the New Hampshire Primary, polling in the single digits in the state.
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