Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Wednesday officially unveiled the Florida State Guard after proposing to bring back the World War II-era force last year.
The governor’s office first described the Florida State Guard as a “civilian volunteer force that will assist the National Guard in state-specific emergencies,” according to a December press release, which detailed a military budget proposal including $3.5 million to establish the guard. However, according to the governor, “the interest was so significant that we actually ended up doing $10 million legislature.”
“One of the reasons we’re here today actually goes back to other Biden policies,” DeSantis said during Wednesday’s press conference. “When he came into office, he decided to impose a COVID vax mandate on the U.S. military.”
DeSantis explained that the decision had an impact of “actually kicking people out who had served honorably” and noted that the vaccine “doesn’t prevent you from getting infected.”
“Actually they have now data that shows some of the areas where there’s a high prevalence of booster shots being done has actually even more infections than less booster shots,” she said. “So for the military to have done that, I mean, Biden is making them do it, but you’re kicking out really good people.”
Biden’s mandate, the governor explained, helped spark the idea to revive the Florida State Guard.
“So seeing that how bad that was, you know, that was something we didn’t want to be a part of,” he said, noting his administration’s fight against mandates across the board.
“We also looked and said, okay, you’re gonna have people that are gonna — they’re processing out like Navy SEALs, who have got, who have done really good stuff. They’re processing people out pilots, all this other stuff. And so there’s opportunities where people still want to serve, but they want to serve based on their conscience,” he explained.
“So we saw that we said, well, where are they going to go?” he added, noting that the National Guard also was not an answer.
“So if you want to have more guardsmen, you have to have the federal government actually give you more billets, and that’s been a fight that’s been going on for a long time. And it just hasn’t been something that Congress has been willing to do and or the executive branch has been willing to do,” he said, noting that Florida has “one of the lowest” guardsmen to citizen ratios as it is.
“They [the National Guard] did a lot with COVID, distributing supplies, helping the nursing homes, doing all these different things and Biden can come in and take them and send them to different places. … You know, it’s the federal government coming in and plucking our national guardsmen and sending them around the world,” he said, noting that the Sunshine State only has “limited capacity at that point.”
“The easiest way to expand it was to restart something that we had in this state for a long time, our own Florida State Guard, and so that’s what we’re doing,” he said, explaining that it will be “comprised of Floridians” and “designed to assist and help only Floridians.”
“It will not be subject to be mobilized by the federal government and the federal government cannot impose policies or penalties on the Florida State Guard. And so now Florida will join over 20 other states and territories that that have currently have their own state guard, including states like New York,” he said, noting that critics made it sound as if DeSantis was imposing “something unique in American history.”
“They were basically saying that like ‘Governor DeSantis is raising an army to raise the countryside,’ you know, like NBC and all these things,” he said, adding that the establishment media simply gave “free advertising for it.”
“And so people are like, oh man, I want to join the Florida State Guard. We’re really excited about it,” he added, noting that they have already had over 1,200 people apply to join.
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