Florida Republicans Downplay Migrant Flights After Gavin Newsom Threatens Kidnapping Charges

Republican officials in Florida are clearly in a bit of a panic after California Governor Gavin Newsom made a threat of filing kidnapping charges against them for flying migrants from New Mexico to California. The Florida officials took credit for the flights, and they've released a new video that allegedly shows the migrants gleefully signing up to be shipped to California. But it is what is NOT on the video that could result in criminal charges, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Republican officials in the state of Florida are apparently terrified about the ongoing investigations into their activities with sponsoring private jets to roundup migrants in other states and to ship them to blue states. Of course, this week we had California Governor Gavin Newsom come out called Ron DeSantis, a small pathetic man for shipping migrants from San, uh, San Jose, I believe it was. Was it San Jose or San Antonio? Um, either way, they shipped the migrants from a different area of the country, a red area of the country, sent 'em over to California and Gavin Newsom on Twitter after calling DeSantis, a small, empathetic man, actually threatened kidnapping charges against DeSantis. And of course, the California Attorney General has launched a new investigation into this action. In response to that, Republican officials in Florida have released video that they personally produced, showing the migrants happy, smiling, filling out their paperwork, and of course, volunteering to get on that flight and go to California.

They were excited to go to California. You see their smiling faces. You see them with their clipboards filling out all their personal information, they're ready to go. And so you have Alicia Collins, the communications director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, who not only confirmed that, yeah, Florida, we Republicans paid for those flights. But says that this video that she personally released, totally exonerates, it says, how dare you say we're kidnapping these people when clearly they're going voluntarily. Ha ha ha, check mate says Alicia Collins. Not exactly. In fact, that video proves absolutely nothing. If anything, that video will be used as evidence against Florida officials if they do bring charges in California. And here's why. Cuz it doesn't matter what's on that video. What matters is what's not on that video. And in fact, that video could be used to prove that Florida officials lied to these migrants about what would happen to them once they arrived in California.

Because according to some people who have been involved in the reception of these migrants in California, they said that these migrants were lied to. They said that these migrants were told they would have jobs, they would have housing, they would have all these things. Same situation, by the way, with the original migrants that DeSantis flew from Texas to Martha's Vineyard. They were promised all sorts of things. And then they got there, of course, and realized these things don't exist. And that, of course, is where the kidnapping charge comes from. Yes, these people may have gone voluntarily, but that doesn't mean that you didn't

Lie to them to get them to agree to go voluntarily. Just because you've got a video of these people signing paperwork doesn't mean you li uh, didn't lie to them before the cameras started rolling. In fact, the fact that you decided to videotape it actually leads me to believe you lied to them before you had your camera rolling, which is probably what happened in my opinion. But we'll see. There is an investigation, but these Florida officials were trying to have a CYA moment. So they had their cameras rolling, they showed these people smiling, happy, filling out their little forms. But what we didn't see was what they were promised. And again, according to people involved, these individuals were lied to to get them on that plane, which would meet the definition.