According to Fox News, the second round of the Republican presidential primary debate turned out to be mostly a disaster. Absolutely awful judges and Nikki Haley and Tim Scott’s constant slap fights all night were about as interesting as watching paint dry.
Ilia Calderón, a left-wing Univision hack, was added as a moderator at the last minute by the RNC. This was one of the event’s biggest problems. Her questions were objectively crazy. She looked like she was trying out for a full-length MSNBC show. She spent the majority of her time trying to make the Mexican government look bad and trying to show that Republicans are racist because they want to fix the border problem.
As expected, she continued to play identity politics by echoing the Kamala Harris-led lie that Florida’s black history program says slavery was good for those who were slaves. According to RedState, that’s not true. The line in question was really meant to show how determined black Americans are.
DeSantis, fortunately, arrived ready and completely annihilated Calderón.
Calderon stated, “slaves learned skills that they could sometimes use to help themselves.” You said, “Slaves learned skills despite being slaves, not as a result of it. But many people are still hurt. This is a personal matter in terms of slave sentences. What do you want to say to them?”
“First of all, that is a hoax that Kamala Harris spread,” Desantis said.
Scott said, “Just get rid of the line. Take out the line.”
Desantis said, “second, that was written by people whose ancestors were slaves. We must cease playing these games because these are brilliant black history experts. So here it is. The education system in our country is getting worse because it focuses on brainwashing kids and takes away their parents’ rights. Florida is a symbol of the rebirth of education in the United States. US News and World Report says that our schools are the best in the country. My wife and I have three kids, ages 6, 3, and 5.”
“This is personal to us. We did not only talk about school choice for everyone. We enacted school choice available to everyone. We did not only discuss the Parents’ Bill of Rights. We put the Parents’ Bill of Rights into law. Just as President Reagan requested in his farewell speech in 1989, we removed Critical Race Theory and now teach American civics and the constitution on a large scale in our schools. Florida knows how to do things right. “Our kids are better off because we stand with parents.”
Though I’m not sure what Tim Scott was hoping to accomplish by collaborating with Calderón’s ludicrous and misleading framing, it undoubtedly hurt his reputation for performing poorly in the discussion. No matter what, DeSantis spun things around very precisely. Not only did he disprove the hoax, but he also knew who wrote the standard, which put an end to the racism argument. He then went on to lay out all of Florida’s educational achievements.
Ron DeSantis claps back at a moderator who says people are "still hurt" by Florida's curriculum on black history:
"That's a HOAX that was perpetrated by Kamala Harris!" pic.twitter.com/eX6nC0PBtd
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 28, 2023
To be honest, I might write more about Calderón’s act in a different piece because it was so funny. I have absolutely no idea what Fox News was even thinking at the time, and the rest of the moderators were nearly as terrible.
Author: Steven Sinclaire
