Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took down a whole host of angry liberals including best selling horror writer Stephen King over the spreading of a fake rumor about the governor.
The aforementioned rumor being pushed by many on the left was that Ron DeSantis signed a bill in Florida that would force students and school faculty to register their political views with the government.
Stephen King posted, “DeSantis signs bill requiring Florida students, professors to register political views with state. I. Can’t. Even.”
The rumor began in 2021 from a Salon article about a Florida law meant to protect “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity”. The law would mandate that schools in the Florida College System take an annual survey to determine “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” and see if all people on campus feel equally permitted to express their own views.
DeSantis’s office was quick to respond to the allegations. Press Secretary Bryan Griffin spoke to FOX news to explain that no “registration” was required of any individuals and that they were kept anonymous.
“No, students and faculty are not required to ‘register their political views,'” Griffin said. “This same fake claim was circling the liberal Twittersphere after the bill was signed in 2021. It was debunked then. It has been debunked again, now.”
“The viewpoint diversity surveys are anonymous, voluntary and no personal information is collected by them at all – only feedback on the intellectual freedom of the campus environment, which is what the survey was designed to determine.”
Governor DeSantis’s office also cited a 2021 PolitiFact report stating that the Salon report was fake and no registrations was required.
The governor himself also addressed the issue directly in the past when he did sign the bill into law, saying, “I think that having intellectual diversity is something that’s very, very important as we go forward. And I know a lot of parents, one of the things they worry about, if you send a kid to a university, are they just going to basically be indoctrinated? Or are they actually going to be taught to think for themselves, challenge assumptions, and really be critical thinkers and learners? We obviously want our universities to be focused on critical thinking, academic rigor. We do not want them as basically hotbeds for stale ideology.”
Ron DeSantis has frequently come under attack from big names on the left like Stephen King, especially as the prospects of a 2024 run by the Governor of Florida become more and more likely. Do you think there is any Democrat politician in the country who could be DeSantis in a Presidential election? Could he beat Trump in a Republican primary?
