Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) refused to deploy the Florida National Guard in response to a request from the D.C. National Guard for help with an planned trucker convoy heading towards the district.
The request was sent a day after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved the mobilization of the D.C. National Guard for the trucker convoy on February 22.
An internal email from the Florida National Guard’s director of military support obtained by Breitbart News said:
District of Columbia National Guard (DCNG) to support the Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) security mission for First Amendment demonstrations expected to occur beginning the week of February 20, 2022. Due to the size of these events, all available MPD resources will be deployed, and the assistance of the DCNG will be essential in supporting the security plan.
The email had the subject line “[Joint Information Exchange Exchange Environment] Information [in Support of] Operation Trucker Convoy.
The D.C. National Guard is expected to be mobilized from February 26 through March 7, according to a notice to troops obtained by Breitbart News. That time period would also cover President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, which occurred on Tuesday.
The convoy was expected to coincide with the State of the Union address, but as of Wednesday, it had not yet made it to the region. According to one social media post, the truckers were in Missouri.
Desantis announced Monday in a tweet he rejected the request.
“Last week, the Biden Administration requested the assistance of State National Guards to deploy to Washington D.C. I have rejected this request — there will be no @FLGuard sent to D.C. for Biden’s State of the Union,” he tweeted.
DeSantis’s Press Secretary Christina Pushaw hit back at journalists and Democrats who suggested that DeSantis’s refusal to send National Guard troops should mean he should not expect federal government help in the future.
Pushaw noted that the Biden Administration had actually already rejected a request for federal aid from Florida in January.
Pushaw also tweeted, “Many journalists calling me to inquire why @GovRonDeSantis declined Biden’s demand for the National guard to come to DC for the State of the Union. But has anyone asked Biden why he needs the National Guard in the first place? There’s no hurricane in D.C. Political melodrama.”
Kyle Shideler, director and senior analyst for Homeland Security & Counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, applauded DeSantis’s decision not to send National Guard troops to D.C.
In an interview with Breitbart News on Monday evening, Pushaw said, “We don’t think that’s the right use of our National Guard troops. We remember the last deployment to D.C. around this time [was] when they were forced to sleep in parking lots, they didn’t have food, they were just dealing with very poor conditions, to just kind of have this fortress around the Capitol.”
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