Matt Gaetz calls DeSantis ‘thirsty’ for inviting Kamala Harris to discuss controversial slavery curriculum

The Florida governor invited the vice president to Florida to discuss the state’s controversial curriculum

Florida Rep Matt Gaetz called his own governor Ron DeSantis “desperate” after he wrote a letter to Vice President Kamala Harris inviting her to visit his state for a discussion about slavery curriculum.

“Imagine being desperate enough to be thirsty for a Kamala visit,” Mr Gaetz wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Mr Gaetz has been a staunch defender of former President Donald Trump, who has been leading Mr DeSantis in the polls as both men vie for the 2024 GOP nomination.

He announced last month that he was introducing a bill “to defund the Jack Smith investigation.”

In his letter, Mr DeSantis invited the vice president to Florida “to discuss our African American History standards.”

He claimed that the Biden administration “disparaged our state” and “misinformed Americans about our education system.” Mr DeSantis penned, “It’s past time to set the record straight.”

“And you clearly have no trouble ducking down to Florida on short notice,” he added, seemingly referring to her 21 July visit to Jacksonville, where she condemned the state’s approval of curriculum standards that minimize slavery and a racist massacre in the state.

“They want to replace history with lies,” the vice president said in Jacksonville, referencing a new set of standards for African American history in Florida schools that will teach middle schoolers how enslaved people “developed skills” that could be “applied for personal benefit.”

“Adults know what slavery really was. It involved rape, it involved torture, it involved taking a baby from their mother, it involved some of the worst examples of depriving humanity of people in our world,” Ms Harris continued.

“It involved subjecting people to the requirement that they would think of themselves and be thought of as less than human. In the context of that, how is it that anyone suggests that in the midst of these atrocities, there was any benefit to being subject to this level of dehumanization?” she said. “It is not only misleading, it is false, it is pushing propaganda.”