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Randy Fine is the only Jewish Republican in the Florida legislature, and has for several years been a strong supporter of Ron DeSantis, the state’s governor. Fine served as DeSantis’s Jewish outreach chair during the 2018 gubernatorial campaign, supported DeSantis’s reëlection bid last year, and backed him for President. Then, two weeks ago, Fine decided to switch his support to former President Donald Trump. The reason? Antisemitism. In Fine’s view, DeSantis has insufficiently addressed numerous neo-Nazi marches that have taken place in Florida in recent years. (The Times reported last month that DeSantis’s unwillingness to condemn the marches has concerned some Republican donors at a time when his campaign is already lagging well behind Trump’s.) The Hamas attack on October 7th was the final straw.
I recently spoke by phone with Fine to try and understand DeSantis’s behavior, and why Fine was now turning to a man with a long history of using antisemitic tropes, and all-around bigotry. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.
A lot of people have come to support Donald Trump for different reasons over the years: the fact that he’s a businessman, the economy, immigration. But you are supporting him in part because of your concerns about antisemitism. Can you talk a little about that?
Well, I was a big supporter of the President during his four years in office. I was at the Abraham Accords when they were signed. I was in the White House at least half a dozen times, so I was always a big fan of the work that he did. The fact that I had endorsed the Governor was not “I’m against Donald Trump,” if that makes sense.
Right, you had to choose, and so you chose, but you weren’t—
I had been very unhappy with the quietness around the rise of Nazism. And while I wasn’t beating the Governor up publicly over it, I was very vocal privately, asking why we were not using the laws that are in place. Why aren’t we taking this seriously? So were lots of his Jewish supporters.
And what was his response?
Well, the response is what you hear. I think he’s been very consistent. I don’t know if it’s the truth, but what he says is he doesn’t want to elevate them by talking about it. He questions whether they are real. He’ll call them fake, and he thinks that they’re doing it to make him look bad. And he has said that consistently for eighteen months.
And you felt like you couldn’t get through to him on that?
I couldn’t, but the Nazis are one level of scary.
They are a high level for sure.
Look, I don’t worry about these neo-Nazis executing the Holocaust in America. It’s bad and we need to do something about it. Don’t get me wrong. But Hamas is a whole ’nother level. And so, while I had been unhappy in private, I changed as a person on October the 7th. And when I saw these protests break out within twenty-four hours in Florida, I knew that I had laid the groundwork by passing laws that could deal with this.
Which protests are you talking about?
There were pro-Hamas protests in Florida, in Tampa, and Fort Lauderdale. The other thing I came to realize was that, if Donald Trump had been President, October 7th wouldn’t have happened. I would bet every dollar, because it didn’t happen in his four years.
It’s possible that October 7th didn’t have to do with Trump, no?
The world was afraid of him. The world was afraid of him. No one’s afraid of Joe Biden unless you’re the person cleaning the stairs. No one’s afraid of him.
Wait, what’s the stair joke?
You know, he falls down the stairs.
Oh, I see. That’s a good one.
Yeah. I mean, no, it’s fine. But people were afraid of Donald Trump. Iran would sit there and think, You know what? If we do this, he could nuke us. I’m sure that went through people’s minds because that’s the kind of guy that he is. And so, I said, Look, I’ve got DeSantis saying things but not acting, and I’ve got Trump who acts.
Kind of a Teddy Roosevelt thing. Talk softly, but carry a big stick.
Well, Trump doesn’t talk softly. Trump talks loudly and carries a big stick but—
Better than Teddy Roosevelt.
I’m not saying better; I’m just saying different. I’ve been the voice of my Jewish community in Florida for seven years. I’m the only Jew in the legislature in the majority party. I am the one who advocates for these things. People look to me, and I also have to deal with them when they’re unhappy, which they have been for two years because of the silence and the antisemitism. The New York Times wrote a piece where they interviewed multiple donors of the Governor who said that they’d called him and said, Do something about it. And he wouldn’t do it.
It’s a little confusing why he wouldn’t respond to people like you who are concerned about this. I have noticed that he often doesn’t like to respond to criticism that requires him to criticize the right in turn.
I don’t know the reason. The one that I think is the most noble of all is he is very confident that he is right almost all of the time. And when he thinks he is right, he is very stubborn and maybe he believes what he’s saying. And look, I understand the stubbornness. In many ways, as governor, he was stubborn, and he was right. Look at COVID.
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