'Blood on his hands': FL lawmaker slams DeSantis as cause of racially motivated shooting

Florida State Representative Angie Nixon (D-13th district), during a Sunday MSNBC appearance, criticized governor and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis over Saturday night's racially motivated murder of three Black people at a Dollar General store by a white gunman in Jacksonville.

During Nixon's interview, MSNBC anchor Lindsey Reiser rolled a clip of DeSantis denouncing the shooting, saying, "targeting people due to their race has no place in the state of Florida."

Reiser then asked the Democratic lawmaker, "What do you make of that condemnation?"

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Nixon replied, "What I make of that condemnation is hollow statements. This is a governor who has done nothing but fan these types of happenings throughout our state. Look, at the end of the day, the governor has blood on his hands. He has had an attack, an all out attack on the Black community with his anti-woke policies, which we know very well, was nothing more than a dog whistle to get folks up and riled up in the way in which it just happened on yesterday."

She continued, "As I listen to him for the first time with that statement, my blood is literally boiling. Myself and other representatives, particularly Black representatives, throughout the past few legislative sessions — we have repeatedly told him what his rhetoric was going to do, and that is exactly what transpired on yesterday. This is absurd, it is ridiculous, he is one of the causes to this. This is an agenda that he has been pushing since he has gotten into office. He showed us who he was when he initially ran for governor saying, 'Don't monkey this up.' Those types of statements — it only leads to things like this."

When DeSantis was running for governor in 2018, The New York Times reported:

Representative Ron DeSantis, the Republican nominee for governor in Florida, drew accusations of using a racist dog whistle on Wednesday after saying in a television interview that voters should not 'monkey this up' by electing his opponent, Andrew Gillum, who would be the state's first black governor.

Watch the video below or at this link.

Florida State Rep. Angie Nixon (D) slams Gov. Ron DeSantis after racially motivated shootingyoutu.be

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The New York Times' full report is available at this link (subscription required).