Ron DeSantis sparks outrage after suggesting the French would not have put up any resistance to a Russian invasion

Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis may have been trying to distract from the US right wing’s lovefest for Vladimir Putin on Wednesday when he praised the fighting spirit of Ukraine’s outnumbered military forces.

But the Republican darling and potential 2024 presidential contender left himself open for attack on social media after he tried to do so with an off-colour suggestion that one of America’s oldest allies would not even attempt to mount a defence against a similar invasion.

Mr DeSantis made the comments on Wednesday at a news conference flanked by Florida students, who moments ago he had publicly admonished for wearing masks in an effort to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

“A lot of other places around the world, they just fold the minute there’s any type of adversity,” Mr DeSantis contended, apparently referring to the US’s European allies.

“Can you imagine if he went into France?” Mr DeSantis asked, referring to the Russian president and the Russian Federation’s military. “Would they do anything to put up a fight? Probably not.”

He then immediately pivoted away from the remarks – it wasn’t clear why the governor felt the need to insult the French military, which is just under twice the size of Ukraine’s, but the attack harkened back to Republican mockery of the French for their country’s refusal to join US forces in the invasion of Iraq. Most experts now agree that the charges of connections to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and harbouring of weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration levelled at Iraq’s government as cause for war were false.

The bizarre insult ignored a number of truths about the situation, ranging from the size of France’s military to the fact that the French famously resisted the Nazi invasion of their country in 1940 and its citizenry formed a resistance movement against the occupying Nazi forces that persisted until the end of World War II. Even putting that all aside and ignoring the impressive strength of France’s contemporary and better-funded military, a Russian invasion of France would constitute a massive incursion into Nato territory and would not just provoke a French response but a response from the entire Nato defence force (which France, as of January 2022, is leading) and other contributions from its membership.

It also came despite Mr DeSantis’s own supposed presidential ambitions. Such talk would likely make forming a multi-nation response against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine that much harder were the Florida governor to be in charge, and could be a weakness that Mr DeSantis’s rivals (such as former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley) could exploit in a hypothetical primary matchup.

The remarks earned Mr DeSantis mockery on Twitter from journalists such as The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman, and others.