DeSantis ad focuses on military career in campaign reboot effort

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A new ad from supporters of Ron DeSantis suggests the governor joined the Navy right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks — part of an effort to reboot his flailing campaign to focus more on his personal biography than political accomplishments.

It states he volunteered “to serve America in combat fatigues as a Jag with the Navy Seals in Iraq,” when in reality he didn’t go to Iraq until 2007, four years after the U.S. invaded Iraq and captured Saddam Hussein, and almost a year after Hussein’s execution.

The ad was produced and launched by the Never Back Down super PAC.

“Not only did Governor DeSantis sign up to serve in the Navy shortly after the Iraq War began, he sought out and volunteered for a deployment with SEAL Team 1 during the troop surge,’ said David Vasquez, national press secretary for Never Back Down. “Governor DeSantis is the only veteran in this race and the only candidate who understands the sacrifices service members and their families make.”

Anders Croy, communications director for DeSantis Watch, a PAC campaigning against DeSantis, said, “No amount of soft focus ads can distract from the fact that under Governor DeSantis, Florida is the nation’s leading inflation hotspot, insurance rates have gone through the roof, and corporate profits have skyrocketed while workers and seniors struggle to pay the bills. You can reset a campaign but you can’t reset Governor DeSantis’ failures as a leader.”

The super PAC raised $130 million to support DeSantis’ run for the GOP 2024 presidential nomination, the Washington Post reported on Monday. Most of that — $82.5 million — came from DeSantis’s former gubernatorial campaign PAC, the Post said.

According to a New York Times/Siena poll released Monday, former President Donald Trump leads DeSantis 54% to 17% in a national poll of Republican voters.

It is not the first time that DeSantis has appeared to have a 9/11 problem. During an interview with Piers Morgan several months ago, DeSantis said he couldn’t remember where he was on that fateful day.

He was teaching history and coaching at the private Darlington School in Georgia. After a photo alleged to be of a young DeSantis with young coeds started circulating, Trump accused him of socializing with teenage girls at the school, an allegation DeSantis has never addressed.

After the terrorist attack, DeSantis continued to teach at Darlington before enrolling in Harvard Law School in 2002, from which he graduated in 2005.

DeSantis joined the Navy in 2004 during his second year in law school and was assigned to the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. After his graduation from law school, he reported to the Navy Command Southeast at Mayport.

From there, DeSantis was assigned in the spring of 2006 to the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, where terrorist suspects had been detained since 9/11. He was a legal adviser and allegedly oversaw the force-feeding of detainees during his time there. The ad doesn’t mention his time there.

He was then assigned to Seal Team One as a legal adviser in 2007 and didn’t report to Iraq until that fall as part of the Iraq War troop surge. He received a Bronze Star, which is awarded for meritorious service in a combat theater.

In his recent book, “The Courage to Be Free,” DeSantis said he wanted to get involved in the nation’s response to the terrorist attacks and talked to recruiters about the opportunities to serve available to him as a recent law school graduate.

“One recruiter told me that the assumption was that the Iraq campaign would be over relatively quickly and that there would be a need for military JAGs to lead prosecutions in military commissions of incarcerated terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base,” DeSantis wrote. That turned out not to be what happened, but it seemed plausible at the time and also seemed like a good opportunity to make an impact.”