Trump ‘considering’ Florida governor for 2024 running mate. No surprise, he’s viciously anti-LGBT+
Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who he is “considering” as his potential 2024 running mate. (Getty/ Joe Raedle)
Donald Trump is “considering” viciously anti-LGBT+ Florida governor Ron DeSantis as his running mate if he runs for president in 2024.
Trump said on Thursday in an an interview with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox Business news channel that he was “100 per cent thinking about running again”, insisting: “We will be very successful.”
He also revealed that he would “certainly consider” his “friend” and viciously anti-LGBT+ Florida governor DeSantis as his running mate.
Trump told Bartiromo: “He’s a friend of mine. I endorsed Ron, and after I endorsed him, he took off like a rocket ship. He’s done a great job as governor.
“A lot of people like that – you know, I’m just saying what I read and what you read – they love that ticket.
“But certainly, Ron would be considered. He’s a great guy.”
With Trump’s horrifying anti-LGBT+ record, adding DeSantis as his running mate in 2024 would create a match made in hell for queer folk.
Just this week the Florida governor vowed to sign into law a “sick” bill recently passed by lawmakers which would ban trans students from playing on women’s sports teams.
In 2019, on the third anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, which saw 49 mostly Latinx LGBT+ people killed, DeSantis infamously failed to even mention the LGBT+ community in his remembrance proclamation.
He was later forced to issue a new proclamation, insisting that Florida would “not tolerate hatred toward the LGBT+ and Hispanic communities”.
The second proclamation was fairly unconvincing, as just a few months earlier, in January, 2019, DeSantis had signed an non-discrimination order for state employees that completely excluded protections for LGBT+ workers.
Joe Saunders, senior political director for Equality Florida, said at the time: “It’s hard to believe that governor DeSantis and his staff are not aware of the LGBTQ communities call for these protections following the Pulse tragedy and therefore it is hard to interpret this as anything less than a purposeful omission.”
During his election campaign in 2018, less than two weeks before Floridians took to the polls to vote him in as governor, DeSantis appeared as the keynote speaker at the Christian Family Coalition Florida’s gala dinner.
The homophobic, transphobic group has lobbied to keep conversion therapy legal, campaigned against same-sex marriage, and supported the anti-trans “bathroom bill” which aimed to ban trans people from using toilets.
