After Fox News twisted his words, Shevrin Jones gets his say

State Sen. Shevrin Jones, who found himself misleadingly quoted by Fox News the night before about a controversial new law, had his say Wednesday night on a rival cable network.

The West Park Democrat, whose press conference quote on the anti-riot measure (HB 1) was chopped up on The Ingraham Angle, appeared unabridged on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show.

“The Governor has created a piece of legislation that no one has asked for,” the first-term South Florida lawmaker said.

Jones’ decontextualized criticisms were dismissed as “wild accusations” by the Governor on Fox Tuesday night. But Ron DeSantis and Laura Ingraham were nowhere to be found as Jones amped up his critique of the legislation and the process in an interview with Maddow.

Maddow cued up the interview saying the bill granted immunity to those who “run your car into protesters if they were engaged in a riot at the time.”

The Senator pointed out operational difficulties presented for local governments.

“The bill also hinders local government from having the ability to alter any of their public safety budget, which definitely ties their hand,” Jones said.

Jones also noted that “anyone who is against the legislation, he said they are the same individuals who want to defund the police.” He noted “serious concern” from cities in his district about this violation of home rule.

“What the Governor has done, he literally has preempted the ability of cities to alter their budgets. They have to go through him,” the Senator noted.

DeSantis, constantly at war with “smears” and “smear merchants” and the “corporate media,” often boasts that he has a platform to fight back during his national television hits. And Democrats plead for equal time.

For one night at least, Jones enjoyed a similar perch.

Jones addressed Fox News twisting his words earlier Wednesday in comments exclusive to Florida Politics.

“Fox News has shown themselves time and time again that they don’t want to be a part of ANY solution, so they spend time misconstruing my words to fit their narrative. Ingraham Angle calls ‘being woke’ propaganda, and she calls BLM a hate group, so, of course, she nor the network desire to showcase truth. I’ll remind Gov DeSantis that he represents 22 million people in the state of Florida, and that includes black people, so he should act like it, even on national TV,”  he told Florida Politics.

Ingraham quoted Jones correctly — but only to a point — in the intro to the DeSantis interview.

“Our response to injustices in this country is protests, but their response is to criminalize it when their recourse for us is to turn to the streets, to make our voices heard in this unjust system. Governor DeSantis’s actions today goes to show that he’s not concerned about the lives of Black and Brown people….”

But she cut off much of the rest of the quote before jumping to the assertion that DeSantis had “declared war.”