'Blizzard of lies': 5 highlights from DeSantis vs. Newsom 'Great State Debate'
San Francisco’s 'poop map' and the 'freedom to defecate'
DeSantis, who slammed the former mayor of San Francisco as "a slick, slippery politician whose state is failing," pulled out a brown-covered map depicting every place in San Francisco where users have reported seeing human feces using the "Poop Map" app.
"This is a map of San Francisco," DeSantis said, brandishing the poop map. "This is an app where they plot the human feces that are found on the streets of San Francisco."
Get Our Latest News for FREE
DeSantis went on to claim the city only bothered to clean itself up when Chinese President Xi Jinping came to town last month for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit, during which Xi and Biden had a meeting.
"Almost the whole thing is covered, except when a communist dictator comes to town," DeSantis noted of the poop map. "They cleaned everything up. So they're willing to do it for a communist dictator, but they're not willing to do it for their own people."
After taking flak for clearing away homeless encampments, cleaning graffiti, and adorning the streets with Chinese flags in apparent deference to Xi, Newsom acknowledged during a press conference earlier in November that the city was spruced up because of the "fancy leaders" from Asia.
"I know folks say, 'Oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town.' That's true because it's true," Newsom said at the time. He later told reporters that "obviously, any time you put on an event, by definition ... you know, you have people over to your house, you're going to clean up the house."
DeSantis claimed the deteriorating condition of San Francisco epitomizes what Newsom's liberal policies have done to the entire state.
"Gavin Newsom, at one point, tried to say that California was the freedom state," DeSantis said. "I just kind of laugh, like, you're locking people down, you're doing all this, but then I thought about it, California does have freedoms."
"You have the freedom to defecate in public in California. You have the freedom to pitch a tent on Sunset Boulevard. You have the freedom to create a homeless encampment under a freeway and even light it on fire. You have the freedom to have an open air drug market and use drugs. You have a freedom, if you're an illegal alien, to get all these taxpayer benefits. So those are freedoms."
"They're not the freedoms our Founding Fathers envisioned, but they have contributed to the destruction of the quality of life in California and the results speak for themselves," he added.
Newsom hit back by sarcastically claiming he "loves" DeSantis's 'rant'" about freedom, then accused the Florida governor of banning books and "criminalizing" teachers, doctors and librarians.
The DeSantis campaign has since begun selling brown "Newsom's California Walking Socks" for $37. "Watch your step," the campaign warned.
