RINO-bought Ron DeSantis teeters on the verge of losing his biggest bankroller
Robert Bigelow, hotel entrepreneur and founder of a lucrative aerospace company—Bigelow has raked in tens of millions from government contracts, notably NASA—is the largest funder for Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, and he’s threatening to pull the plug if the politician fails to adopt a “more moderate approach.”
Per the Washington Examiner, Bigelow dumped $20 million into Never Back Down, a DeSantis-aligned super PAC (the donation exceeds the next highest one by $18 million), but now Bigelow’s support hangs in limbo; from the outlet:
‘He [DeSantis] does need to shift to get to moderates,’ Bigelow said. ‘He’ll lose if he doesn’t. … Extremism isn’t going to get you elected.’
Bigelow cited one of DeSantis’s most extreme policies when asked which ones he took an issue with: Florida’s six-week abortion ban.
First off, referring to American principles and conservative beliefs as “extremism” is telling, because there’s nothing extreme about protecting innocent life; in fact, both the Declaration and the Constitution speak explicitly to the right to life. The government exists for one purpose, and that is to secure the rights of the individual. What good is a government that absconds from its role as the guarantor of inalienable rights? Answer: No good at all, and inevitably tyrannical.
I also find it interesting that Bigelow notes “extremism” doesn’t win elections; yet, President Trump was/is tagged as an extremist, and the label only adds to his popularity... and he did in fact win an election (twice?).
As I did a bit of research into Bigelow, I came across a decent number of news pieces, and they shared a common theme: Bigelow wanted Trump to “implement a twofold increase in NASA’s budget”—for science, of course. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Bigelow had received tens of millions of dollars for space-related endeavors…from NASA…. That’s just one crazy coincidence! So far, according to The Planetary Society, which charted the NASA budgets over the years, no such increase occurred.
Noted 20th-century high-profile banking president Herbert Prochnow once said, “When money talks, there are few interruptions.” Maybe President Trump is an exceptional man—he is—and maybe he’s the type to interrupt, even when money is talking.
Ron DeSantis, though? The governor has quite a history of backing the space-related MIC; from a local Florida outlet in 2020:
Hours after NASA launched its Perseverance Rover from Cape Canaveral toward Mars, Gov. Ron DeSantis ceremonially signed a bill to financially empower Space Florida.
…
Space Florida is a public-private organization that works to attract aerospace companies to Florida for business opportunities. DeSantis lauded the organization’s work and their relationship with companies such as Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Boeing.
He described Florida as the ‘silicon valley’ for commercial aerospace.
Just three weeks ago, the Orlando Sentinel ran a letter-to-the-editor type piece, which included this very astute and rightful criticism:
I’m writing to tell you [DeSantis] that you seemed to have overlooked a major purveyor of DEI and wokeness, a powerful Florida entity that openly and publicly pushes diversity and directly targeting our youth. I know you’re concerned because you talk so much about ‘parents’ rights’ (‘states rights’ recycled for the 21st century).
So why in heaven’s name are you ignoring NASA and Kennedy Space Center? They have a ‘diversity and inclusion’ statement right on their website.
Can’t you make them retract that statement? You could threaten to withhold funding like you’ve done with schools. You could enact legislation that at the very least, forces them to divert funds and time defending themselves, and exposes them as dangerous wokeness allies.
At 1.5 million visitors a year, they can’t match Disney’s numbers, but there they are nonetheless, in Florida, getting away with pushing a very woke agenda.
Despite the stinging unanswered inquiries noted above, Bigelow promotes DeSantis as the anti-Woke guy, evidenced by this Reuters report:
Bigelow said he agreed with most of DeSantis’ policies, however, and that he was ‘spot on’ in his war on ‘wokeism.’
Perhaps, we have foxes in the henhouse?
Image: DonkeyHotey, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered.