This ad, accusing DeSantis of deceiving voters on his position on fracking and offshore drilling, fails that test. Not only that, it relies on out-of-context video clips to make its case — what we label manipulated video. Watch the video above to see how the ad has deceptively edited the clips.
Let’s go through the ad line by line.
“Absolutely going to frack.”
The ad opens with a clip of DeSantis making this statement in the third Republican primary debate. A graphic stamps “false” on his face. This is when the voice-over declares that he is lying.
But this snippet is taken out of context. DeSantis spoke during a contentious exchange with Haley in which she asserted, “He has opposed fracking. He’s opposed drilling.” DeSantis shot back, “That’s not true.”
Haley then suggested DeSantis was really a liberal in disguise. “He was praised by the Sierra Club and you’re trying to make up for it and act like you weren’t a liberal when it comes to the environment,” she said. “You were, you always have been, just own it if that’s the case, but don’t keep saying you’re something that you’re not.”
(The Sierra Club in 2019 offered some positive comments on a DeSantis plan for Everglades restoration — “we have some praise, some criticism, and lots of questions” — but Sierra Club deputy communications director Jonathon Berman tweeted after the debate: “fwiw, DeSantis received an F from the Sierra Club.”)
In response to Haley’s jab, DeSantis made the remark that was snipped for use in the ad. We have highlighted the words used in the ad in boldface.
“So our whole energy plan, you can’t get the shale without fracking. We are absolutely going to frack, but I disagree with Nikki Haley. I don’t think it’s a good idea to drill in the Florida Everglades and I know most Floridians agree with me.”
In other words, DeSantis has opposed fracking and offshore drilling in Florida, citing its geological makeup of limestone and shallow water sources, but has supported it at the national level. As a member of Congress in 2013, DeSantis voted for a bill that would prohibit the Interior Department from imposing federal rules and regulations on states’ fracking operations, in effect deferring to state rules.
Running for president, DeSantis has advocated for fracking. But when he ran for governor, he pledged “to pass legislation that bans fracking in the state.” (His GOP primary opponent, then-state Agricultural Commissioner Adam Putnam, had a similar position.)
This distinction is missing in the ad, which never mentions Florida.
The ad then shows a quick clip of DeSantis speaking to a voter at a crowded event, who asks: “Do you also support banning fracking?” He replies: “Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep.”
The clip was posted on Facebook on Jan. 10, 2019, by Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit group. The group claims that “our super volunteer Ginger got Ron DeSantis, Republican (!) on the record pledging to ban fracking. Honestly, we weren’t sure that he really meant it. Today by executive order he called for action to be taken to end fracking.”
But as we noted, that was DeSantis’s campaign position. Moreover, in the same November 2018 election in which DeSantis was elected governor, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment that banned drilling under Florida waters, a stance supported by many of the state’s Republicans.
Two days into his term, on Jan. 10, 2019, DeSantis signed an executive order that implemented the measure, as celebrated in the Facebook post. The order directed the Department of Environmental Protection to “take necessary actions to adamantly oppose all offshore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing in Florida.” In effect, that has meant no oil and gas permit authorizing hydraulic fracturing has been issued during his term as governor.
DeSantis has not yet fulfilled his pledge to pass legislation that would ban fracking in the state.
“DeSantis sends a billion dollars to brace the state of Florida for the impacts of climate change”
This is a clip from a 2021 Florida news report, when DeSantis in his budget proposal said more money was needed to allow the state to handle extreme weather events. The proposal, called Resilient Florida, called for almost a doubling of state funds devoted to the problem. “The purpose of this is to tackle the challenges posed by flooding, intensifying storm events and sea-level rise,” DeSantis said at a news conference, noting that the cost of property insurance had been spiking in the state.
The clip appears intended to underscore Haley’s debate charge that DeSantis is really a liberal on the environment.
But guess what? Haley has acknowledged climate change is an important issue. “First of all, yes, is climate change real? Yes, it is,” she said at the first GOP debate, in August, saying the first step would be to pressure China and India to lower their emissions.
DeSantis, in a May Fox News interview, rejected the view that hurricanes have gotten worse because of climate change. “This is something that is the fact of life in the Sunshine State,” he said. “I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather.”
In that interview, DeSantis called for “market-based solutions” to reduce emissions, not government mandates. The same point was made in a 2020 YouTube video released by Haley’s advocacy group Stand for America, which acknowledged: “Man-made climate change is real.”
“When the president wanted to do offshore drilling, I opposed him on it.”
The ad then shows another snippet — this time from a 2018 debate with his Democratic rival, then-Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. Once again, important context is missing. Here’s the full clip, with the section used in the ad in boldface. Donald Trump was president at the time.
“When the president wanted to do offshore drilling, I opposed him on it because I think Florida’s unique and we shouldn’t have drilling offshore. But guess what? Because I have a productive relationship, he listened to me, he listened to Governor [Rick] Scott, and we were able to get the exemption from Florida.”
As we noted, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment in 2018 that banned drilling in Florida waters. On the campaign trail, Haley herself has supported state-specific exemptions. Asked about offshore drilling at a Sept. 7 town hall, Haley said: “I think that states need to be able to make that decision because it affects the quality of life for people of the states. For the states that want to do it, I’m all for it. For the states that don’t want to do it, the people have a right to make that decision.”
In fact, in 2012, Haley supported federal legislation that was framed as pro-drilling but in effect would have imposed a de facto ban on drilling within 50 miles of South Carolina’s coast. (State waters extend three miles into the Atlantic and nine miles into the Gulf of Mexico; beyond that are federal waters.)
“Ron DeSantis. He’s lying because he’s losing”
The ad runs the “yep, yep, yep” clip a second time before ending with this tag line, apparently to suggest desperation on DeSantis’s part.
But it’s this ad that seems desperate. Reasonable people could disagree about whether DeSantis is being hypocritical when he advocates one policy for his state and another for the rest of the country. But it’s not an unreasonable position for a Republican — putting greater control at the state level — and it’s certainly one that Haley has embraced on the issues highlighted in the ad.
A spokesperson for SFA Fund did not provide an on-the-record response but, without attribution, reiterated the false claims in the ad as “one of Desperate DeSantis’ many lies.”
This ad fails on many levels. It twists DeSantis’s state policies to suggest he plans to bring them nationally — when in fact he says the opposite. He has made that distinction clear in debates, standing next to Haley. The ad also tries to claim DeSantis is a closet liberal on the environment, which is not true. Taking together, that might mean Three Pinocchios, as DeSantis has opposed fracking and offshore drilling in Florida.
But what makes this ad especially egregious is that it twice clips videos so that important context is missing — a deceptive technique we call “missing context — isolation.”
SFA Fund earns Four Pinocchios — again.
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