On Monday, Politico published a story in an attempt to paint Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as a hypocrite for battling the left-wing indoctrination platform known as critical race theory, CRT, while overseeing a state government that paid a consulting firm hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop government plans to address “racial inequality”.
Politico alleges that the state has paid MGT Consulting $700,000 since DeSantis became Governor in 2018, despite being referred to as “well-versed in critical race theory”.
The story, of course, comes with many hollow points.
The Politico story written by Matt Dixon accuses DeSantis and the Florida Department of Education of delivering most of the funding to MGT, however, Bryan Griffin, deputy press secretary for DeSantis, claimed then that it was published before the DOE gave an answer and contended that they never partnered with MGT to contract anything related to critical race theory.
After Politico published a spreadsheet of contacts for MGT, Griffin looked over said data and found many issues.
This is a bogus story. Florida does not fund CRT.
#1 – This is the list that the reporter emailed and demanded answers about. It is clearly unannotated. And contracts are handled by agencies, not the governor's office. The story was published without a response from @EducationFL pic.twitter.com/LtVM47kIUQ
— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) July 11, 2022
According to The Federalist, Griffin reffered to the story as a “bogus story”, claiming “Our office couldn’t possibly speculate about each of these contracts, nor assume the intended purpose of each engagement” regarding the list of contracts between the DOE and MGT.
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Politico went on to make vague claims arguing that MGT has made dozens of pitches nationwide as a consultant, observing its “experience in ‘all aspects of equity evaluation, diversity and social justice research, and critical race theory”, giving the states of Colorado and Virginia as examples.
But Politico does not detail the work MGT did in Florida. Instead, Politico seemed to have conflated CRT with efforts to increase diversity, as they claimed “The company has also done extensive work for Florida government entities, including using ‘race and gender’ data that was ‘used to shape policy designed to increase diversity in [state university] institutions.”
Governor’s Office Fires Back On Media Account That Claims DeSantis Supports CRT https://t.co/O7UAZipd6M
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) July 12, 2022
Efforts to increase diversity are by no means similar or on par with a form of curriculum that argues for the idea that America’s institutions were all founded on racism, and that form of systemic racism is still prevalent today.
In a reply to Politico, Griffin claimed that DeSantis’ office wasn’t “interested in speculating under the assumptions you presented based on work they have done in completely different states.”
Alex Lanfranconi, the DOE communications director, commented regarding Politico, after not being reached out to prior to the story being published:
“It’s completely irresponsible to imply we’re paying MGT for any work regarding Critical Race Theory. There is no evidence of this accusation and it is entirely false. We’ve never contracted with MGT for anything related to Critical Race Theory since Governor Ron DeSantis took office.”
And for the record, here is @EducationFL 's response to this absurd propaganda: pic.twitter.com/acgqqzPdVO
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) July 11, 2022
The hit piece gave another failed example regarding CRT, alleging that the Florida Department of Management Services, regarding a section to a contract that talks about “creating opportunities for a woman-, veteran-, and minority-owned small business enterprises to participate in procurements and contracts.”
In an email to Griffin, Dixon explains his justification of the article, claiming “the [DeSantis] administration has in the past defended instances of people supporting philosophies it does not. … Wasn’t sure if this was another example of that.”
Dixon was asked by The Federalist whether or not the intention of his story was to accuse the Florida DOE of funding MGT directly for work related to CRT, or if the DOE just so happened to contract with companies who did work in the CRT field, yet declined to comment.
The Politico piece seems to serve as a gotcha that just does not add up. As this response to Christina Pushaw puts it, why simultaneously proclaim CRT is not taught in public schools and then cheer when it apparently is?
wait – I'm confused, Leftists were chanting "CRT isn't in schools" but now they claim it is in schools and that's a win for them????
— WL (@a337uk) July 11, 2022
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