Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the last few days has taken to larding his rhetoric with references to plans for mass slaughter, regional news outlets New Hampshire Public Radio and Florida Politics reported.
NHPR covered the candidate's three-day campaign jaunt to New Hanpshire, during which DeSantis reportedly
promised that, under his presidency, Mexican drug cartels would be “shot stone cold dead,” and vowed that when it comes to federal bureaucrats, “we are going to start slitting throats on Day One.”
Florida Politics reported on an interview DeSantis gave last week on right-wing satellite, cable and streaming news channel "Real America's Voice," where he discussed the prospect of "throat-slitting" in greater detail.
“I think the idea that you take a flag (officer) or general officer who recently retired and put them as the Secretary of Defense, I think it is a mistake,” DeSantis said, advocating for “professional distance from the General Officer Corps.”
“You know, they may have to slit some throats, and it’s a lot harder to do that if these are people that you’ve trained with in the past or that, you know, so we’re going to have somebody out there, you know, be very firm, very strong...."
(Meanwhile DeSantis's recently established State Guard, nominally concerned with disaster response, is reported to be profoundly dysfunctional and in the process of being equipped and trained more like an army, according to recruits, some of whom who have quit in disgust. The Guardian has a summary of these findings by reporters with the Miami Herald, Tampa Bay Times, and Florida Standard.)
At least one New Hampshire voter was slightly perturbed with the violent rhetoric, NHPR found.
“If I was in charge of his PR, I would have said, ‘Don’t use that terminology,’ ” said Norm Olsen, a GOP primary voter from Portsmouth who describes himself as a “Sununu Republican."
Speaking personally, it's hard for me to read the repeated references to mass shooting or throat-slitting, metaphoric though the latter may be (and whatever he actually has in mind specifically), as anything but another and louder dog whistle among the many being sounded by right wing extremists.
And as a form of priming for further stochastic violence, in a country where literal mass slaughters have already become almost routine.
Not to mention the product of a sick mind.
This person has no business anywhere near the presidency--nor in any situation that entails power over others.
H/t to Raw Story for highlighting this escalation.