{"id":23046,"date":"2022-06-08T18:10:26","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T22:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=23046"},"modified":"2022-06-08T18:10:33","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T22:10:33","slug":"controversial-desantis-aide-belatedly-registers-as-a-foreign-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2022\/06\/08\/controversial-desantis-aide-belatedly-registers-as-a-foreign-agent\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial DeSantis aide belatedly registers as a foreign agent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Christina Pushaw, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ spokesperson, was already highly controversial. Then she had to register as a foreign agent.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Christina Pushaw, Press Secretary for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Ordinarily, gubernatorial press secretaries are not recognized at a national level. In fact, there are 50 governors in the United States, and off the top of my head, I can only name one of their press secretaries: Christina Pushaw, the controversial spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer, for example, Twitter felt the need to briefly suspend<\/a> Pushaw\u2019s account for violating rules on \u201cabusive behavior.\u201d Around the same time, the CEO of the Associated Press reached out<\/a> to Florida\u2019s Republican governor, urging him to address his press secretary\u2019s \u201charassing behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months later, Pushaw made strange and provocative<\/a> comments about an eastern European country adopting \u201cvaccine passports\u201d following a meeting with the Rothschilds \u2014 a popular boogeyman for anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. (Confronted with a backlash, she walked all of this back<\/a> soon after.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year, Pushaw made headlines again for making homophobic comments<\/a> in defense of her boss\u2019 controversial policy that critics have labeled the \u201cDon\u2019t Say Gay\u201d law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the Florida Republican is back in the news for unfortunate reasons. NBC News reported<\/a> this morning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spokeswoman for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis registered this week as a foreign agent for her previous work for a former president of Georgia, her lawyer told NBC News. Christina Pushaw worked for former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a close ally of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from 2018 to 2020, focusing on the need for free and fair elections in the eastern European country, her attorney, Michael Sherwin, said.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a Washington Post report<\/a>, the Floridian press secretary belatedly registered as a foreign agent \u201cfollowing contact from the Justice Department.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t have any additional information on this, but as a rule, when the Justice Department \u201ccontacts\u201d someone about their work for a foreign government, the situation has advanced to a rather serious stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the bigger picture, MSNBC\u2019s Chris Hayes added<\/a> this morning that it\u2019s \u201cabsolutely astounding the raw percentage of America First types who are literal foreign agents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an important point: Michael Flynn was also a foreign agent<\/a> when Donald Trump appointed him as the White House national security advisor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christina Pushaw, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ spokesperson, was already highly controversial. Then she had to register as a foreign agent. Ordinarily, gubernatorial press secretaries are not recognized at a national… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[2963],"class_list":["post-23046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news","tag-controversial-desantis-aide-belatedly-registers-as-a-foreign-agent"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}