Bombs away: Kathy Hochul rips off Ron DeSantis’ Gaza riff, apologizes for it

Gov. Ron DeSantis has apparently inspired the Governor of New York, but in the end she said she was sorry, not to the Florida Governor but to those offended by a recent statement reminiscent of a DeSantis doozy that recurred on the presidential campaign trail.

As reported by the New York Post, Gov. Kathy Hochul raised eyebrows with remarks on Thursday to the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York.

“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day,” Hochul declared, likening that pure hypothetical to what happened to Israel last year.

She has since apologized for a “poor choice of words” and an “inappropriate analogy,” but she has yet to apologize to DeSantis for borrowing from him without attribution. The main difference? Hochul substituted Buffalo for Fort Lauderdale and Canada for the Bahamas.

“If someone was firing missiles from the Bahamas into, like, Fort Lauderdale, we would never accept that. We would flatten. Anything that happened, it would be done like literally within 12 hours, it would be done,” the 2024 presidential candidate said in Manchester, New Hampshire in December.

“If people were firing rockets from the Bahamas into, like, Fort Lauderdale, we would never allow that. I mean, we would flatten them. Within like five minutes, we would flatten them,” he said in Eldridge, Iowa, in early December.

The Florida Governor had used that construction throughout the fall since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel as a metaphor demonstrating solidarity.

The U.S. government responded to the first DeSantis statement of this type via the Bahamian press.

“The Bahamas and the United States enjoy an enduring and unique partnership. (Chargé D’affaires Usha Pitts) regrets if DeSantis’ comments suggested anything other than a close alliance between our two democratic nations,” the U.S. Embassy said in a statement to The Nassau Guardian.

There’s currently no indication that Canada’s diplomatic corps is taking Hochul’s gaffe quite that seriously. But if it rises to the level of an international incident, expect updates to this post.