The campaign team that surrounded Florida Governor Ron DeSantis more than a year ago to claim that he is the true MAGA successor to Donald Trump has some explaining to do. While the Florida governor has had some definite populist victories during his time in office, DeSantis doesn’t appear to be attracting the best people to his cause.
The DeSantis 2024 campaign’s biggest fundraising event is coming up this month. It’s being jointly hosted by a Moderna lobbyist, a company that makes puberty blockers for trans children, and a sanctioned Chinese firm. What gives?
The fundraiser is being held at the DC offices of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck later this month. That’s the largest lobbying firm in the country, and tickets to the DeSantis fundraiser are $1,000 a pop.
Marc Lampkin is one of the event’s hosts. He’s a Moderna lobbyist. Now that this has made headlines, it’s an awkward situation for the Florida Governor. DeSantis has been trying to tout his record through the pandemic and the lockdowns, claiming that he was a more sensible leader than President Donald Trump.
But was he? Florida is one of only a handful of states where pastors were arrested for trying to hold services during DeSantis’s lockdowns. In 2020, DeSantis also called on President Trump to restrict domestic travel for American citizens so they would not be able to cross state lines. He imposed 14-day quarantines on people traveling into Florida from out of state and thanked Tony Fauci for the idea. DeSantis traveled to the White House to praise President Trump for his leadership during the pandemic.
DeSantis is now calling for a grand jury investigation into Moderna. So, how does that square with him raising money from Moderna at this soiree in DC later this month?
The same lobbying firm also lobbies DC for a company called AbbVie. The company has been making the puberty blocker Lupron since 2014. The Florida legislature passed a bill to ban the use of puberty blockers on children in Florida, and DeSantis signed it into law. But then he turns around and takes money from AbbVie?
The Daily Mail in London also did a search of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and found that Marc Lampkin has lobbied Congress on behalf of a Communist Chinese-owned semiconductor manufacturer called Fujian Jinhua. In 2018, the Trump administration sanctioned the company as a security threat against the United States.
These companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which is fundraising for Ron DeSantis. The Trump campaign and its allies were quick to hit DeSantis with claims of hypocrisy. Senior Trump advisor Jason Miller didn’t mince any words.
“It’s no surprise Ron DeSanctimonious would do a fundraiser with a lobbyist for a Chinese semiconductor company considering his globalist masters at the Club for No Growth have a China First trade policy,” he noted. “DeSanctus hypocrisy surrounding the COVID vaccine, and his willingness to accept money from a representative of a company manufacturing puberty blockers, also show that DeSanctus is willing to sell out for anything if the price is right.”
The DeSantis campaign was also hit earlier this month when it was caught using AI-generated fake images of Donald Trump hugging Anthony Fauci. That never happened, obviously, and the DeSantis campaign once again had egg all over their faces.
There’s no question that the Florida governor has had a spectacular record on some important GOP social and fiscal issues. That doesn’t change the fact that he has surrounded himself with some really terrible people for this 2024 campaign.
