Ron DeSantis, the Trump-endorsed congressman who won Tuesdays GOP primary for Florida governor, is an administrator on an active Facebook group where conservatives share racist, conspiratorial and incendiary posts about a litany of targets, including black Americans and South Africans, the deep state, survivors of Februarys massacre at a Florida high school, immigrants, Muslims and, in recent days, John McCain.
DeSantis was listed as one of the groups 52 administrators and moderators as of Wednesday. His involvement in the group was first noted by a researcher for Media Matters for America on Tuesday.
DeSantiss campaign was already defending the congressman from accusations of racial insensitivity after his primary victory.
In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday morning, DeSantis warned voters not to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist by supporting his opponent, Andrew Gillum, the Tallahassee mayor who became Floridas first black gubernatorial candidate from either party when he won the Democratic nomination Tuesday.
DeSantiss spokesman Stephen Lawson said DeSantis was obviously talking about Florida not making the wrong decision to embrace the socialist policies that Andrew Gillum espouses. To characterize it as anything else is absurd, CNN reported.
DeSantiss campaign and congressional offices had not returned the Ledgers emails and phone messages seeking comment about his ties to the Facebook group as of Wednesday afternoon.
The Facebook group, simply named Tea Party, has nearly 95,000 members, and users must join the group to post or comment. The banner for the group is an image of the Confederate, Christian and Gadsden flags flying alongside the flags of the U.S. and Israel. (It isnt affiliated with the conservative group Tea Party Patriots.)
Members of the group have attacked Black Lives Matter and other African-Americans as ghetto scum and ridiculed the teenage survivors of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14. Posters have referred to Douglas students David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez as a Hitler wannabe and a bald-headed brat, respectively, after they became outspoken activists for gun control in the wake of the shooting, during which a former student allegedly shot and killed 17 people.
One member believed the violent far-right rally of neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 was a hoax, writing in a post liked by 1,600 users that the rally was orchestrated by the left to destroy America.
After McCain died Saturday, members flooded the page with mocking posts, including a satirical headline that read, President Trump bestows Medal of Honor to John McCains tumor. Another image of a tombstone referred to McCain, a naval aviator who spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before becoming a senator and Republican nominee for president, as a traitor to America and a friend to the Vietcong.
The group cheered Trumps reported reference to African countries as shitholes, blamed Islam for terrorism and accused Black Lives Matters activists of plotting to take over the country.
According to a timestamp in the group, DeSantis joined on April 28 in the middle of his Fox News-fueled campaign during which he released a TV ad showing his allegiance to Trump by building a wall of toy bricks with his daughter and reading Trumps book to his infant son.
