Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t officially declared himself a candidate for the 2024 presidential election at this point, and that’s fine by Whoopi Goldberg and the hosts of “The View.” That’s because, as Whoopi so bluntly put it on Thursday morning, DeSantis is “not ready for America.”
To kick off the day’s Hot Topics discussion, the women discussed their opinions on how DeSantis has positioned himself politically thus far, particularly with his responses to twice-impeached former president Donald Trump’s attacks, as well as DeSantis’ own gripes about “wokeness.”
When Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines began debating if DeSantis is actually playing a smart long game, having gone to both Yale and Harvard, Whoopi noted that DeSantis’ degrees don’t mean much to her.
“Just because people have education, doesn’t mean they have any kind of real sense,” Whoopi said. “And the problem for me is I’ve listened to him now talk about what he’s doing for all the families and it occurred to me last night, you’re not helping families avoid anything! You have made life harder for many families.”
Honing in on DeSantis’ actions to ban African American studies in schools, the host once again got blunt.
“Here’s the bottom line: people know what’s going on. You can hide it, you can put it down, you can do whatever, but the truth of the matter is, we have an issue in this country, and it has to do with race,” she said. “And kids are going to know it, because you are trying to hide it.”
Whoopi also called out the Florida governor’s handling of LGBTQ rights in his state, and in the end, made it clear that he doesn’t have her vote if he does run — but that he probably shouldn’t run at all.
“There are things that are going to come up that you can’t hide, that you can’t fix,” she said. “So dude, you’re not ready for America. You’re not ready for this country yet. ‘Cause you haven’t learned that we are a diverse nation! So, you can run if you want to, but I ain’t voting for you.”