Jean Moulin would have moderately appreciated the remark. In the middle of a press conference where he reacted to President Joe Biden’s speech on the Union, during which he claims to have “fallen asleep”, the Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis slipped a small remark on the resistance opposed to the Russian army by the Ukrainians… targeting France. “Can you imagine if Putin had invaded France, would they have resisted? Probably not. The governor thus takes up an American cliché on the supposed cowardice of the French, particularly in vogue across the Atlantic after the French refusal to accompany the United States in the invasion of Iraq, in 2003.
The tirade immediately sparked its share of comments on social networks. Beyond an obvious problem of European geography, the Republican, rival of Donald Trump whose media projections he shares, is criticized for his lack of education in history. “You are just showing your ignorance of the history of the Second World War”, annoys a surfer, while another twittos makes a gif bloom “Please stop talking” on the hashtag #FrenchResistance.
The colt who became Trump’s rival
Ron DeSantis, backed by President Donald Trump when he sought his term as Governor of Florida, enjoyed strong popularity early in his term, extending education measures, passing legislation to preserve the Florida’s fragile environment (notably by banning hydraulic fracturing in the Everglades) or by legalizing medical cannabis.
But his belated response to the Covid-19 outbreak has been criticized, and he fell out with Donald Trump after the US election. Now one of the Republican Party’s rising stars, Ron DeSantis recently carried the law “Don’t Say Gay”, which prohibits discussing issues of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools in Florida. He also sparked a controversy by refusing to condemn a neo-Nazi demonstration, his spokesperson Christina Pushaw questioning the real ideology of the demonstrators. “Do we even know if they are really Nazis? “, she wrote, before deleting his tweet.