A former Tony Award nominee-turned presenter followed a hackneyed Broadway
script Sunday night, likening White House hopeful and Florida Governor Ron
DeSantis to a Ku Klux Klan leader in the annual theater smug-fest�s latest
attack on conservatives.

Den�e Benton, currently starring in HBO�s �Gilded Age� and who was nominated
for a Tony back in 2016 for her performance as Natasha Rostova in the musical
�Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812,� lashed out at DeSantis at the
Tony Awards on Sunday night.

�Earlier tonight, [Carnegie Mellon University] and the Tony Awards presented
the 2023 Excellence in Theatre Education Award, and while I�m certain that
the current grand wizard � I�m sorry, excuse me � governor of my home state
of Florida, I am sure that he will be changing the name of this following
town immediately,� she continued, as she mentioned the town of Plantation,
where award-winner Jason Zembuch Young is a public school theatre director.

Den�e Benton calls Governor Ron DeSantis the "current grand wizard"
of Florida at the #TonyAwards pic.twitter.com/O2iEfbOvQO

� The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) June 12, 2023

The New York City audience laughed at Benton�s characterization of DeSantis,
just as a similar Tony Awards crowd cheered in 2018, when actor Robert DeNiro
strode to the microphone and declared, �I�m gonna say one thing. F*** Trump.�

�It�s no longer �Down with Trump,�� he yelled. �It�s f*** Trump,� eliciting
another giant cheer.

DeSantis has drawn criticism from the Left for opposing the teaching in
public schools of Critical Race Theory, which among other things, holds that
blacks are perpetual victims and whites are oppressors. In April 2022, the
Florida Department of Education found 41% of math textbooks under
consideration for schools included instruction on CRT, Social Emotional
Learning, or other prohibited topics.

�We�re going to focus the education on the actual strong academic performance
of the students; we don�t want things like math to have some of these other
concepts introduced,� DeSantis said at the time. �It�s not been proven to be
effective and quite frankly, it takes our eye off the ball.�

In May, DeSantis signed three bills into law that placed further restrictions
on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as Florida was recently
ranked as the top state in the country for education.

The three bills that DeSantis signed were Senate Bill (SB) 266, which
prohibits institutions from spending federal or state dollars on
discriminatory �diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)� initiatives; House
Bill (HB) 931, which prohibits Florida�s public institutions from requiring
students, faculty, or staff to take political loyalty tests; and SB 240,
which expands workforce education initiatives and increases access to career
and technical education (CTE) programs, according to the governor�s office.

SB 266 garnered the most news attention because it directly goes after woke
ideologies in higher education by cutting off funding for �initiatives that
promote dangerous political and social activism, such as DEI initiatives.� HB
931 prohibits schools from requiring �political statements and ideological
attestations by faculty and students in hiring, promoting, and admissions.�

--
Let's go Brandon!