Ugly new details about Ron DeSantis’s stunt point to a deeper scam

Who paid for the migrants to be transported from Texas to Florida?

The Florida Republican refuses to release the state contract that funded the flights. That suggests DeSantis is seeking to bury critical facts even as reporters fill in details about the flights — and their questionable legality.

In a useful piece NBC News’s Marc Caputo reports that the outfit contracted to ship migrants — Vertol Systems Company Inc. — has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to super PACs backing Florida GOP candidates. One funded Matt Gaetz, a right-wing media troll who moonlights as a congressman.

Given all this, it’s not hard to discern why DeSantis won’t release the contract. Among other things, it could indicate that state money is to be used to fund the transport of migrants from other states to Florida.

After the outcry over Martha’s Vineyard, DeSantis stoked speculation that another planeload of migrants would soon arrive near President Biden’s Delaware home.

That particular Delaware plan apparently has been scrapped. Yet NBC reports that it resulted in that same GOP-connected company getting paid nearly $1 million by the state of Florida, even though no migrants were delivered. It seems plausible that DeSantis pulled back because it suddenly looked legally dubious. Yet the money was apparently paid.

The land of right-wing make-believe

But much of this saga’s “own the libs” component is unfolding in a land of right-wing make-believe. In such media precincts you hear again and again and again that liberals are enraged because migrants were introduced into their strongholds and liberals don’t want them around, exposing their hypocrisy.

What angered liberals was the deliberate dehumanization of migrants, not theburdens their arrival created for local governments. Yet right-wing figures simply keep repeating their fantastical version of liberal rage. To “own the libs,” you don’t have to “own the libs” at all. The mere declaration that it happened suffices, in a self-perpetuating feedback loop filled with vacuous self-congratulatory snickering about something that didn’t actually happen.

So who is getting “owned” here? Again, it isn’t liberals. It’s Florida taxpayers

.https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/23/ron-desantis-migrants-marthas-vineyard-florida/