This past Sunday Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis went off in their first debate in the race for Florida’s governor. In all honesty, the debate involved a great amount of trash talk, much coming from former U.S. Representative, Ron DeSantis.

The debate began with DeSantis calling Gillum a “failed mayor” and claims that he was previously involved in “corruption.” This immediately showed how unprofessional DeSantis is. DeSantis could have begun with speaking on what he will fix and improve in Florida instead of down talking his opponent.

On the other hand, Gillum, who has the backing of the Sierra Club, called the Republican “an election year environmentalist.” In other words, someone who only cares for the environment if he’s getting votes. Gillum continued by saying, “What Florida voters need to know is that when they elect me governor, they are going to have a governor who believes in science.”

DeSantis was also forced to confront certain things that he has tried to use against Gillum. For example, DeSantis went on Fox News and warned Floridians not to “monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda” and voting for Gillum, who is poised to be the state’s first African American governor. Even though this statement is clearly racist, the Republican vigorously denied that his comment was about race, saying, “Floridians can know that I’ll be a governor for all Floridians.”  First of all, how does your ability to govern Florida and your racist remarks have any correlation? Gillum responded, “He has only continued in the course of his campaign to draw all the attention he can to the color of my skin. The truth is, I’ve been black all of my life. So far as I know, I will die black.” You go Mr. Gillum! However, please discuss how YOU will fix the problems in Florida.

Though his victory in the primary was mainly caused by an endorsement from President Donald Trump, DeSantis sought to keep some space from the President, while avoiding the question on whether he considered
Trump a good “role model,” and instead talking up the administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which once again has NO CORRELATION WHATSOEVER. I think we can all agree that the “Red Herring” is Mr. DeSantis’ favorite fish.

All in all, even though environmental, social, tax, and gun control problems were addressed for about 10% of the debate, the other 90% was horrible and the second debate will either be equally horrible or even more horrible. These two men who proposed so much to Floridians and are promising so many things proved in the first debate that they are only useful for trash talk.