By now, you’ve seen the big deal the media made out of “Nazis” hanging out in front of the Tampa, Florida, convention center where Turning Point USA was holding its Student Action Summit. It became a big enough deal that “The View” decided to try to equate the attendees with Nazis, which they spent every episode since having to walk back thanks to TPUSA threatening lawsuits.

(READ: Whoopi Goldberg Finally Apologizes for Trying to Connect TPUSA’s Student Attendees With Nazis)

Still, one of the talking points was that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis didn’t say anything to denounce the Nazis outside the convention center, and according to the media, this naturally means he’s okay with them. Naturally, this leads many lefties to the natural endpoint of “DeSantis and Nazis are working together.”

As I said during Monday’s episode of RedState LIVE!, it’s ridiculous that DeSantis has to automatically denounce everything around him, whether he’s associated with it or not. That, and I brought up a very obvious double standard…

Why does @GovRonDeSantis have to denounce every little thing that happens around him when people like @AOC can stay mum when asked point-blank if she denounces Antifa violence with no blowback? Good on DeSantis for not playing the media's game. pic.twitter.com/1Ho0P31jPi

— RedState (@RedState) July 29, 2022

Apparently, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t have to follow the same rules. Case in point, when Antifa was celebrating violence happening at the border, AOC was asked point-blank if she denounced this bout of domestic terrorism.

Her response?

There was no response.

.@AOC refuses to condemn the Antifa attack on the Tacoma ICE center; refuses to tell @TheRealKeean if her inflammatory comments about “concentration camps” radicalized the attacker. pic.twitter.com/YOjn0yL032

— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) July 15, 2019

Let’s break this down. AOC was asked point blank to condemn a terrorist attack by Antifa against government officials at the border. It was clear what group the attacker belonged to, what his intentions were, and all AOC had to do was say “yes, I do condemn it.”

She refused to. Yet, the media refused to go after her for this and no one on the left accused her of tacitly approving the Antifa attacks.

Yet, despite the fact that DeSantis was never directly asked by the media and likely didn’t even know the Nazis were outside until much later, he’s still expected to automatically denounce them, or else he’s with them.

This is the left’s lazy activist journalism on display. Expecting someone to denounce every single little thing without prompting is a ridiculous thing to ask. If that was the case, then DeSantis would spend the vast majority of his day making declarations and sending out tweets that make it clear he’s not for the bad thing or the bad people that just appeared in front of a working camera. Not that it would matter. The left wouldn’t believe him anyway.

The proper thing to do is to do what DeSantis has been doing this entire time, which is not playing their rigged game.

This isn’t the first time the Florida Governor’s been confronted with answering for groups he’s not a part of. As reported by The Guardian, the press wanted DeSantis to denounce a group of neo-Nazis earlier this year:

On Saturday and Sunday, a group of 15 to 20 protesters donned Nazi symbols and chanted antisemitic slurs along the North Alafaya Trail in Orlando. According to videos that quickly circulated across social media, the protesters gave Nazi salutes, yelled “White power!”, waved an anti-Biden banner and at one point got into a brawl with a driver.

The protests have been met with disgust from Democrats and Republicans alike. However, DeSantis did not publicly condemn the marchers until Monday during a press conference, and then largely to deflect blame on to his political opponents.

“So what I’m going to say is these people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to do with that, we’re not playing their game,” he said.

DeSantis saw through it then, he sees through it now, and everyone else should get wise to the underhanded attempt to find new ways to name-call and accuse Republicans.