New York Times Attempts to Write a “Gotcha” Article on DeSantis…Major Fail
The left-driven New York Times published a wildly critical article over the weekend about Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. The title of the article was “Pranks, Parties, and Politics: Ron DeSantis’s Year as a Schoolteacher.”
The first part of the article described the governor’s first year as a popular and energetic teacher. He led five classes on history, coached both the football and baseball team, and was a dormitory supervisor. One teacher tabbed him as a “triple threat.”
DeSantis at 23 years old was a hard worker. That may the nicest thing the paper was willing to communicate.
The writer of the article is Frances Robles, the Florida correspondent for the New York Times.
A Twitter post that links to the NYT article has this claim: “A window into a little-known period in the life of Gov. Ron DeSantis — a time when he partied with high school students and insisted that the Civil War was not about slavery — by @FrancesRobles.”
But, even in Robles’s article, she writes that that description was not true. Two former students remember DeSantis attending a party, but it was not during the school year, it was after graduation.
The idea that DeSantis insisted that the Civil War was not about slavery is also a red herring. One student was quoted in the article as saying DeSantis took the “devil’s advocate” position in teaching. He used this method to challenge his classes with contrary opinions so that they learned how to defend their positions. That certainly is not “insisting on a position.” This is the Socratic method and it is a great way for history to be taught.
Halfway into the article, Robles quotes a woman named Danielle Pompey, “Mr. Ron, Mr. DeSantis, was mean to me and hostile toward me. Not aggressively, but passively, because I was Black,” Pompey said.
She is also the student DeSantis used the “devil’s advocate” approach with. It’s likely she did not understand this approach and may remember it as mean.
This claim is not backed up by any other student’s testimony.
This “gotcha” article by NYT just kind of fizzles out.
A window into a little known period in the life of Gov. Ron DeSantis — a time when he partied with high school students and insisted that the Civil War was not about slavery — by @FrancesRobles. https://t.co/TVv8B0TCJ7
— stephanie saul (@stefsaul) November 5, 2022
