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It was a good thing I suppose. But it’s not as if these people were truly stranded. The State Department had already started flying Americans from Israel to Europe where they can catch commercial flights back to the states. They had already evacuated 1,000 by Monday. I don’t know what that number is up to by now. Plus Corey Mills went and got 77 out within the first few days of the war.

But an issue with the State Department flights is that they require evacuees to repay the costs of the flights, at some future date. So basically DeSantis helped some of them avoid the cost of their flights back home - at the Florida taxpayers’ expense. Is that a good thing? Perhaps. On top of that he may have helped expedite rescue efforts that were already underway by Operation Dynamo, although that’s less clear. But either way, the most he did was speed up a process that was already well underway and used state funds to subsidize the costs.

But the thing about all of this is that it required very little effort or personal risk on the part of DeSantis. Someone on Free Republic correctly observed recently, that DeSantis likes to go for the low hanging fruit. He looks for problems that are relatively easy to address and which have good optics. Then he pats himself on the back and touts his amazing leadership abilities.

So, DeSantis may have had a positive role in an evacuation effort that was already underway. But again, these people were not truly stranded. Nor were they truly rescued -not in the same sense that the Americans left in Afghanistan are/were stranded or rescued. These are not hostages we’re talking about. So as usual, we see DeSantis hyping and exaggerating his accomplishments while being a no show on important issues that would require him to stand up to the establishment.