Once upon a time (2013, to be exact), a nasty little first-term Congressman named Ronald DeSantis decided he wanted to make a big, big statement in order to ingratiate himself with a group of fellow conservatives that called themselves the Tea Party. In a gesture that foreshadowed what would later become his trademark “LOL, let’s own the Libs” strategy, on the day after he was sworn into office, DeSantis voted to deny $9.7 billion in relief to New York and New Jersey residents whose lives had been ravaged by one of this nation’s most destructive national disasters: the “Superstorm” known as Hurricane Sandy.
As reported at the time by Steve Contorno, writing for the Tampa Bay Times: "This 'put it on the credit card mentality' is part of the reason we find ourselves nearly $17 trillion in debt," was how DeSantis justified voting against the aid.
But that was before DeSantis became the current governor of Florida and the embodiment of Republican hopes to succeed the erratic and volatile Donald Trump; before he raised his national profile with a deliberate series of callous, racist, and homophobic political stunts in an effort to demonstrate his rightful heirship to that throne; and—most importantly—before his own state of Florida was soundly thwacked head-on with a disastrous hurricane whose destructive path has left in its wake an as-yet unmeasured toll on residents unfortunate enough to find themselves in its crosshairs.
