Yesterday Kristi Noem was on the Warroom with Steve Bannon and made some interesting comments that some could view as an attack on Governor DeSantis and his record in Florida.
While discussing how well she did with South Dakota in the midterms, Noem made the following comments:
We’re growing at ten times the national average. That’s what is so incredible to me, that I don’t have beaches to recruit people to. I have January coming up and I don’t have Arizona’s January or Nevada’s. If you want to live in South Dakota, you have to want to.
The reason that people are moving to South Dakota at ten times the national average and growing so fast is because we’re free. We are literally the beacon of freedom that they will come and live in this beautiful state in the middle of the country. Because it’s the one place that gives them hope. I think that’s really really remarkable.
We’re not Florida, which is pretty easy to talk people in to moving to Florida. For years and years it’s not been that easy to move people to South Dakota.
Bannon suggests ‘shots fired’, to which Noem laughed, and then asks her to expound on the lockdowns across the country given the revisionist history some are attempting.
She replied…
I would just say that Republicans and Democrats need to tell the truth because voters remember. Voters remember when they couldn’t go to their kid’s basketball game in Nevada. They remember when they couldn’t go out to eat in California. They remember when they couldn’t go on spring break at their beach in Florida. They remember that, so don’t – I think that when people are talking, whether they are Republicans or Democrats, just be truthful about what happened in the past because they will get reminded and the people will remind them and to try to rewrite that history just creates a dishonest and mistrust in government again that’s going to come back and undermine the ability of them to get anything accomplished, or even be able to lead again…
I don’t want to make too much out of this because clearly Noem never mentions DeSantis by name. But she does mention the state of Florida a couple of times in her examples and even Bannon thought she was firing shots at DeSantis with her comments.
But even more so, when suggesting that Republicans and Democrats need to tell the truth to voters, she reminds people that beaches were closed in Florida during spring break during the pandemic.
Now that kinda sounds like a shot aimed at DeSantis, but I don’t know why it would be. DeSantis fought local officials who were closing down beaches because he didn’t want the lockdowns.
Maybe Noem is considering a run for president and is taking pot shots at DeSantis like this to see what happens. I don’t know. But it does kinda feel that way.
You can watch Bannon’s full interview with Noem below: