Yesterday, we reported that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis cut through the red tape to rescue Floridians stranded in Israel. What we didn’t know is that he’s also planning to pick up non-Floridian Americans, as well as those Joe Biden dumped in Greece.
On Monday night, DeSantis told Megyn Kelly, “We knew there’d be people that wanted to get back, many hundreds, maybe even more than 1,000. And they were not getting any luck with the State Department or with the embassy. So I did an executive order last week, activating Florida emergency response to be able to bring planes in there and take people back home.”
“So we had the first plane of 271 on Sunday night,” he added, noting that there were 91 children onboard. “You know, I had mothers that were stranded with three or four kids. I had one family with ten kids that they were trying to get back to Florida.”
He explained that the rescue flights were not limited to Floridians: “If there are people that are struggling to get to Georgia or New York or whatever, we’re all Americans, and we want to help people, but it is limited to Americans.”
The Biden administration “is going to charge people fleeing a war zone and then dump them in Greece,” he added. “They’re not even bringing them back to the United States. So we have more flights coming. The next one will be [Tuesday] morning. We are taking people from Israel, but we’re also going to stop in Athens, Greece, to pick up people that the federal government may have stranded, and so we anticipate many hundreds more that we’ll be able to rescue over the next couple of days and we’re happy to do it.”
He contrasted his actions with the Biden administration’s open borders. “You can come across the southern border, and the federal government will fly you all across the country, free of charge. They’ll put you up in nice hotels at taxpayer expense. They’re not charging the illegal aliens.”
Related: Adam Kinzinger on DeSantis Airlift: ‘You Can’t Do That!’ DeSantis: ‘Hold My Beer.’
DeSantis described how touched he was by the stories of families on the first rescue flight, which he met at the airport late Sunday. “When we greeted people, and they were telling stories, it really brought it home. I mean, I had one mother point to her six-year-old daughter—and my wife and I have a six-year-old as well—and she said that her daughter was saying, ‘Mommy I don’t want to hear rockets anymore. I don’t want the rockets.’ So they were really, really excited to be back.”
“When there’s a void of leadership, you’ve got to step up and make a difference,” DeSantis said. “So we were able to do that and we’re proud to have played an important role.”
Asked what the U.S. role should be in Israel, the governor pointed out that Israel “has never asked us to assume responsibilities that they should be assuming for themselves. They’ve worked very hard to have a strong and capable military. Support we’ve given them over the years, whether it’s Iron Dome or some of these other programs, that has supplemented what they’re doing for themselves.”
He said there is no basis for sending U.S. ground troops to the regions. “I think where we show support is primarily the moral clarity to say Israel has a right to defend itself. And they have a right to eliminate Hamas,” he explained, noting that many around the world are calling on Israel to cease defending itself. “So they’re going to need us and I don’t think Biden is going to going to do this over the long haul.”
“There’s going to be a lot of pressure from the UN [and] all these other places to tell Israel to back off, but they can’t live like this, where they could have so many of their people massacred in cold blood. So I think that’s the main thing, not U.S. troops, but that’s strong support.”
“But ultimately,” he said, “this is not something that’s going to be an American ground war. We, of course, do have an interest in recovering the hostages that are American citizens… But ultimately, it’s Israel’s war. We should support them, but it’s not something we should get enmeshed in with our own ground troops.”
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