Florida Governor and Republican presidential long shot Ron DeSantis received significant criticism for promising to “slit the throats” of government employees that he says are part of the “deep state.”
“On bureaucracy, you know, we’re going to have all these deep state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on Day One and be ready to go,” DeSantis said. “You’re going to see a huge, huge outcry because Washington wants to protect its own.”
The violent language, made in New Hampshire during a campaign event, was denounced by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union in the nation.
“Governor DeSantis’ threat to ‘start slitting throats’ of federal employees is dangerous, disgusting, disgraceful, and disqualifying,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement released Thursday. “Federal employees – over a third of whom are veterans now wearing their second uniform in service to their country – have dedicated their lives to serving their fellow Americans.”
Kelley added that “no federal employee should face death threats from anyone, least of all from someone seeking to lead the US government,” and demanded DeSantis retract his statement.
While DeSantis likely did not mean he would literally kill federal employees once elected, Kelley argues that such violent rhetoric has resulted in violent reactions in the past.
“We’ve seen too often in recent years – from the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 to the sacking of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 – that violent anti-government rhetoric from politicians has deadly consequences. Any candidate who positions themselves within that shameful tradition has no place in public office.”
DeSantis has promised to fight the “deep state,” something his Republican rival - former President Donald Trump, has consistently promised to do since his 2016 campaign. After Trump’s campaign, the term has grown in popularity among Republicans trying to position themselves as anti-establishment, though the term has deeper roots and is not exclusive to conservatives.
Referring to the officials and administrators in government who are not elected and influence policy, particularly national security experts, Trump and now many of his fellow Republicans have insisted the “deep state” is part of a conspiracy to stop their agenda.
DeSantis is firmly entrenched in the second position in the Republican primary, leading the third-place candidate Vivek Ramaswamy by around 7.5 points according to poll aggregators, but he remains far behind Trump, who has a chokehold on the Republican primary and leads DeSantis by anywhere from 30 to 52 points depending on the poll and how many candidates are included.
In fact, DeSantis receives roughly the same amount of support among likely Republican primary voters as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gets from likely Democratic primary voters, with the caveat that the Republican field is far more crowded.
The DeSantis campaign is largely seen as attempting a reboot following its own culling of its campaign staff. Last month, the campaign fired more than 40% of its original staff amid complaints the campaign was burning through cash at an unsustainable rate.
This also was not the first time DeSantis promised in an interview to “slit throats” should he become president. Last week, he promised to hire a defense secretary that would not be a typical recently retired officer because they “may have to slit some throats, and it’s a lot harder to do that if these are people that you’ve trained with in the past.”
Meanwhile, Trump is promising his own actions should he return to the White House. After being indicted for the third time on Thursday, Trump posted on his Truth Social account on Friday that “IF YOU COME AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
The former reality TV star did not clarify who specifically he planned to come after, or what he planned to do to them, but his previous post included a campaign ad attacking current US President Joe Biden and the various district attorneys who indicted him and special counsel Jack Smith who headed up the investigation into Trump’s classified documents case.
The eyebrow-raising message has since caught the eye of Smith, who appealed late Friday to the federal judge overseeing the election interference case. The special counsel requested a protective order for evidence, arguing a gag order was necessary in light of Trump's recent and past commentary over his legal cases.