It didn’t really stand out in a debate where all the candidates were waxing xenophobic with saber-rattling toward China, Iran, migrants, and Palestinians, but Ron DeSantis deserves special opprobrium for a passing reference to the Middle Eastern garb he observed while serving in Iraq as “man dresses.” He made this obnoxious comment, moreover, while trying to justify the killing of people at the southern border who might — or might not — be smuggling drugs.
“When I was in Iraq, the Al Qaeda wasn’t wearing a uniform. You’d see anyone walking down the street, they all had man dresses on. You didn’t know if they had a bomb, an IED, attached or not,” DeSantis said.
NBC News reports that DeSantis has used the same term on the campaign trail. The Florida governor, who has been trying to out-Trump Trump in his flailing effort to catch up with the front-runner, has also referred to “so-called Islamophobia,” which makes more sense each time he exhibits his own bigotry.
At a different point in the debate, DeSantis, in calling for reduction in legal immigration (presumably from Middle Eastern countries), argued that the U.S. should not emulate Europe in “committing suicide” by “importing people from cultures hostile to us.”
Perhaps next time DeSantis is meeting with conservative Evangelicals in Iowa, someone should remind him that Jesus Christ and his disciples almost certainly wore “man dresses,” not slacks or jeans. Maybe this particular term would drop out of the candidate’s messaging, unless he chose to insist on it to exhibit his defiance of “wokeness.”
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