DeSantis Shreds Transgender Ideology: ‘A Total Fraud,’ It’s A ‘Lie’ That Must Be Pushed Backed On | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Ryan Saavedra.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed transgender ideology this week when asked about ongoing controversies involving the hot-button topic.

    The governor, who criticized Bud Light's decision to partner with transgender-identifying influencer Dylan Mulvaney, took a shot at the transgender movement as a whole when asked if it represented an "an existential threat to women."

    "A total fraud," DeSantis said in a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday. "I mean you have a swimmer that competes on the men's team for three years at Penn and then switches to the women's team and then wins the 500-yard freestyle national championship for women. When you're a mediocre male swimmer and now you win the women's, and so you had a second-place finisher, she was actually from Sarasota, she should have been the national champion."

    DeSantis' remarks were in reference to Lia Thomas, a male who claims to be female, who beat Emma Weyant, a woman, in the 2022 NCAA championships 500-yard race.

    "I did a proclamation from our office saying she was the best woman swimmer in the 500 yard because she was," DeSantis said. "That swimmer was not the best women's 500-yard champion, okay? The number two [swimmer] was the best woman, so that's just the bottom line."

    DeSantis, perhaps foreshadowing something that might be a key theme of a potential presidential campaign, said that the larger issue was the truth.

    "And so some of this is yes, it's taking away opportunities, and athletics and some other stuff, and that's really, really important," the 44-year-old governor said. "But I think there's also just the issue of, are we going to be a society based on truth? Or are we going to be a society based on deceit? And if you take a man and they dress up as a woman, and you tell me, I have to accept that they're a woman, then you're asking me to be complicit in a lie, and I just refuse to do that. So we've got to tell the truth. I think the truth will set you free."