The 2024 election is starting to heat up as candidates like Tim Scott and Mike Pence have dropped out of the race.
Meanwhile, frontrunners are starting to ratchet up the rhetoric to see who will end up with the nomination.
Now, Ron DeSantis just slammed Nikki Haley in a major way with a brand-new merch release.
DeSantis trolls Haley’s free speech comments with new merchandise
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decided to troll his opponent, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, after she vowed to require every social media user to be verified.
The new merchandise mocks Haley’s comments and features a new t-shirt that has the phrase “Always Watching” and a pair of binoculars on one side.
The opposite side of the t-shirt features a quote from Haley that says, “Every person on social media should be verified by their name.”
But even more hilarious is a dystopian-inspired “Official Internet Identification Card” that looks like something you’d find in a science-fiction novel or movie.
The release of the new merch comes after Haley appeared on Fox News and said one of the first things she would do when elected President would be to force social media companies to institute the verification requirement and that they would be forced to show their algorithms.
She said, “First of all, it’s a national security threat. When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say. And it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots and the Chinese bots. And then you’re going to get some civility when people know their name is next to what they say, and they know their pastor and their family members are going to see it.”
In response, DeSantis and others criticized Haley, calling her idea “unconstitutional.”
The Florida Governor wrote, “You know who were anonymous writers back in the day? Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison when they wrote the Federalist Papers. They were not ‘national security threats’ nor are the many conservative Americans across the country who exercise their Constitutional right to voice their opinions without fear of being harassed or canceled by the school they go to or the company they work for.”
A dangerous proposal
According to DeSantis, Haley’s proposal is “dangerous,” and he said it would be “dead on arrival” in his administration.
Not long after, Haley walked back her stance on the comments when she told CNBC’s Squawk Box she didn’t mind “anonymous American” free speech, but she did not support anonymous free speech for actors in countries like Russia, Iran and China.
Haley said, “What I know, what anyone in intelligence [knows]… Russia, Iran and China, North Korea too, know that the cheapest form of warfare is to spread misinformation. Look at what happened with Israel. You want to know where all this pro-Hamas information is coming from? It’s coming from foreign actors that are sowing chaos and division.”
She also said that she wanted “freedom of speech for Americans” but that she did not want freedom of speech “for Russia and Hamas, and that’s what’s happening right now. So the way you fix that is we need our social media companies to verify everybody.”
24/7 Politics will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
