“The Emperor Has No Clothes”

That is what I thought of when I read this article.

Ron DeSantis Is Afraid of Questions From a 15-Year-Old
The Florida governor's operation went to extraordinary lengths to intimidate a high school sophomore—all for a question about Donald Trump.
The Daily Beast
By Jake Lahut
September 01, 2023

Quinn Mitchell has seen at least 35 presidential candidates in person since 2019, when he first started showing up at New Hampshire primary events to ask them questions.

Not a single one of them had ever treated the now-15-year-old as if he were a threat—until Ron DeSantis came to town.

It all started with a straightforward question. In June, when DeSantis stopped for a town hall event in Hollis, Mitchell raised his hand in the crowd.

“Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power,” the teenager asked the governor, “a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?”

The nerve of a kid asking that question! Now the governor has to pussy foot around the question and direct it back on the kid.

DeSantis dodged the question and said Americans shouldn’t get stuck in the past, but not before remarking—in a somewhat impressed, incredulous tone—on Mitchell’s age. “Are you in high school?” the governor asked.

And of course all the loyal Trump and DeSantis fans are up in a tizzy. The nerve of him!

Speaking about it for the first time in an interview with The Daily Beast, Mitchell says that he was grabbed and physically intimidated by DeSantis security at two subsequent campaign stops, where the candidate’s staffers also monitored him in a way he perceived as hostile.

We can’t have a kid asking embarrassing questions like, we just want fluff questions. We want questions that keep to the script!

NBC News wrote,

When Mitchell was 11 years old, he asked Joe Biden, who was then a candidate, about Trump’s impeachment proceedings; Beto O’Rourke about election interference; and Klobuchar about the details of how former special counsel Robert Mueller might speak to Congress.

But DeSantis is quaking in his boots over the kid.

 

But at that interview with Biden, he sat down and talked to Mitchell, USA Today reported that,

“He gave me a five minute lecture about what it was, what it’s supposed to mean and the importance of keeping promises,” Mitchell said. They agreed on a promise between just the two of them: the next time Mitchell sees Biden, if he brings the challenge coin, the former vice president owed him a drink.

Over the course of the next few months until the New Hampshire primary, Biden actually owed him multiple drinks. For an 11-year-old, the drink of choice was Coca-Cola.

Mitchell remembers one moment when Biden came prepared for the deal.

“He just pulled this Coca-Cola out of his pocket,” Mitchell said, laughing.

Compare the two candidates' treatment toward Mitchell, which one do you want to have as president?

I went to a campaign rally once for of all candidates Nixon. He came to Hartford for a rally at the state armory, you just walked right in ushers directed me to an open seat and that was it. Now campaign rallies are an orchestrated event and you have to tickets! Not just anyone can attend now, you have to be a party regulator, you have to know your place… when to applauded and when to boo on cue.

Yeah I can see security being nervous in this day of age but it seems to me that they went overboard.