On 9/11 anniversary, DeSantis warns against evil forces ‘inside our country’

PALM HARBOR — Speaking during a 9/11 remembrance event in Pinellas County Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis linked the tragic events of that day 24 years ago with the killing of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk, saying his fatal shooting displayed “some of the evil that’s lurking within.”

“That attack [on 9/11] was an exterior attack, with people who were emanating from foreign lands with a foreign ideology. And yesterday we saw the assassination of a young political leader, Charlie Kirk — who I knew, many of you probably knew — and you see some of the evil that’s lurking within,” DeSantis said.

He praised Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, for his ability to bring conservative viewpoints to college campuses, which he called “usually hostile terrain” for political conservatives, including himself.

The proper response to disagreeing with someone’s views is “not to shout or scream someone down. It’s not to create unrest so that the mob makes the event not happen. And it is certainly not that you kill somebody in order to silence them,” he said, as the crowd applauded.

“So, as we commemorate the lives we lost that day because of that terrorist attack, and as we recognize the evil that was present in this country as a result of this external force and this external ideology,” he continued, “let’s not now 24 years later succumb as a country to some of those forces inside our country who are really trying to upend what America is all about.”

DeSantis offered the remarks at Curlew Hills Memory Garden in Palm Harbor, a location close to where he grew up in Dunedin.

When speaking about the Al-Qaeda attacks, the governor recalled how that event changed the trajectory of his own life. If it had not occurred, he said, it was unlikely he would have become a Naval officer.

DeSantis enlisted in 2004 while in his second year at Harvard Law School and joined the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006. He was awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious service and received at least 10 awards and decorations.

The governor gave tribute not just to the nearly 3,000 people in New York City, the Washington area, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, who died on Sept. 11, 2001, but to the tens of thousands of first responders who sacrificed their own health that day and weeks and months later at Ground Zero in New York City.

Giving tribute to the first responders

“There’s been many that have died in the years since as a result of what they did that day and in the ensuing days,” he said.

“There’s others — first responders — who are still suffering from very significant afflictions as a result of their service on that day. So, all in, you’re looking at way more than 3,000 people as a result of that terrorist attack on 9/11. And I know we’ve got some folks that have since relocated to Florida who are battling different types of illnesses as it relates to that day and their service after, and just know this day is a day to also thank them for what they did and just express sympathy for what they’re still going through, because it’s been very difficult for a lot of people and a lot of families.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 24,000 responders who worked at the site in Lower Manhattan or at the debris-sorting pile on Staten Island have developed cancer, and more than 8,000 responders and survivors have died.

Nearly 3,800 of those who died had cancer, although the C.D.C. does not track whether cancer was the cause of death or the death was caused by 9/11-related illness.

Shortly after the event, the governor’s office announced that in response to a directive from President Trump and in honor of Charlie Kirk’s memory, the flags of the U.S. and the state of Florida will be flown at half-staff at all local and state buildings, installations and grounds throughout the state until sunset this Sunday.

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