The hosts of “The View” went in on Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday, after he had several people arrested unexpectedly for voter fraud this week in Florida. According to the women, the politician “set these people up.”
The discussion came in light of body camera footage released this week, showing officers arresting 20 people earlier in the summer, who allegedly broke the state’s election laws on felon voting rights. Each were previously convicted of murder or a sex offense, but voted in 2020. In the footage, those being picked up were visibly confused and had no idea they’d violated any voting laws. According to DeSantis, “Amendment 4,” a ballot measure passed in 2018 which restores voting rights to felons, didn’t apply to these people because felons convicted of murder or a sex offense cannot vote, even if they served their time in prison.
At that, Whoopi Goldberg was thoroughly confused, saying that she always thought that, if a person is ineligible to vote, then they’d be turned away immediately on site. Then, she turned her ire on DeSantis, for not providing clear information to these people.
“What are you doing, man?” Goldberg said. “Why are you allowing this? This is your problem. You set these people up to be part of this ‘voter fraud’ thing that you keep looking for. And you set these people up. What are you doing? And why, why is this — you know, it didn’t used to be you had to be concerned about voting. It was very clear.”
Of course, Joy Behar wasn’t surprised by this move. For the host, something like this is par for the course among most Republicans at this point.
“This is what they’re up to now, the Republican party. Because they can’t win, and they know they can’t win, because the demographics are changing and the future is not Republican,” Behar said. “So, they have to cheat.”
Host Sara Haines agreed that the move by DeSantis felt like “entrapment,” and argued that his Office of Election Crimes and Security is in itself a “waste of law enforcement.” Meanwhile, Alyssa Farah Griffin agreed that it was a set-up, but not just of voters.
“Ron DeSantis is trying to bait the media, liberal media I would say, into coming out and defending violent offenders and murderers who try to illegally vote. This is a set-up,” she said. “This is what he does. He knows how to drive news attention, he wants us all to say, ‘Of course murderers should be able to vote!’”
Farah Griffin added that there’s really one clear indicator that DeSantis isn’t actually concerned about voter fraud in the country — and it comes in the form of one of his friends.
“Let’s be honest, if he cared about addressing voter fraud, there’s a certain Florida resident who’s guilty of trying to defraud 81 million people of their votes! Donald Trump,” Farah Griffin said. “We’re not doing anything about it.”
