‘He’s Focused on the Basic S***’

You know something is up when foul-mouthed rapper Azealia Banks praises Ron DeSantis.

Thankfully, there are some people besides conservatives who can still tell left from right and up from down. Somewhat, at least.

In a Guardian feature story on, among other things, her new record label, Banks said she left Los Angeles for Miami.

There, she said, she feels “way safer” and doesn’t feel the need to have a gun.

Most of her credit goes to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “He’s focused on the basic s***,” she said, like serious health care needs as opposed to cosmetic surgery.

And DeSantis displays common decency, according to Banks.

Surviving COVID in Los Angeles in 2020 seems to be what prompted Banks to review where she was living — what she described as a shallow city filled with virtue signaling.

“Every which way I turn [in LA] there’s a Black Lives Matter sign, and then we’re watching swathes of Latino people die every day because they’re considered essential workers,” she said.

Banks said she didn’t want to minimize issues black people face, but mocked the idea of a white woman with a Valley Girl accent and a BLM sign who is ignorant of poor people in front of her.

“I had to go because I can’t do this – either COVID was gonna kill me, or depression,” she said. “I’m going to f*****g Miami.”

Many are joining Banks — the Sunshine State is the fastest-growing in the nation, according to December estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

It’s the first time Florida has been the nation’s leader in growth since 1957. That was in the wake of the immediate post-World War II boom, which included an eight-percent population increase between 1950 and 1959.

From 2021 to 2022, Florida replaced Idaho as tops in growth with an estimated 1.9 percent population increase to 22,244,823. That’s almost as much as the 2 percent growth recorded from 2010 to 2019.

Things are happening in Florida. Just like they’re not in California, at least not in the realm of good things.

An intellectual hero of mine is Victor Davis Hanson, a classics scholar and military historian who has his feet on the ground because he’s also a California farmer.

It’s not just the beaches of Florida that are drawing Californians, he said in a recent interview.

“People are leaving to go to places that are what once was known as hell – hot Texas or desert Nevada – that have become paradise in their minds,” Hanson told Siyamak Khorrami, who hosts the “California Insider” podcast of  The Epoch Times. “And we took paradise and turned it into hell.”

“Let’s take a normal community that’s not hard left progressive, say, Fresno County,” Hanson said. “If you go to an average August afternoon – it’s about 108 [degrees] and you can see people go into the local Walmart. And they’re not going there to purchase things. They’re going there to find free air conditioning.

“Because they can’t afford – even at subsidized rates for being poor – they can’t afford to turn on their air conditioning because the rates are so high. And the rates are so high, deliberately, so people will not use air conditioning.

“And so the people who set policy – whether it’s on electric prices, fuel prices, or the school system – they’re never subject to the consequences of their own ideology.”

Which explains why, as Florida is number one in population growth, California was number one in people leaving from 2021 to 2022, according to The San Francisco Standard.

And Florida is a place where the governor makes even Azealia Banks feel good.