In a rare appearance in Florida, GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis returned to his gubernatorial job momentarily from his flailing White House campaign to announce he removed another elected Black district attorney for a bogus reason. After DeSantis’s announcement, his subject takes to the mic to lambast the decision done to boost DeSantis’s cred among racist, misogynist right wingers who don’t believe the law applies to them–particularly when the law is enforced by a non-white, non-male prosecutor.
Having already removed Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren for, DeSantis claims, failing to protect the citizens of the county for refusing to waste county resources on prosecuting minor crimes, DeSantis now goes after Monique Worrell, the elected prosecutor for Florida’s 9th Circuit which encompasses Orange and Osceola Counties.
DeSantis originally cited the shooting of two Orange County police officers by a suspect who was out on bail as the justification for removing Worrell, citing complaints from local law enforcement officers–overwhelmingly white and male–who claim Worrell is responsible for releasing the criminal. In fact, as in most of the United States, a judge set the defendant’s conditions of bail, not the prosecutor.