Mansoor Adayfi, a Yemeni citizen who was held for 14 years at Guantanamo Bay, claimed that Ron DeSantis observed his brutal force-feeding by guards during a hunger strike in 2006. The story was published in The Independent last week.

When I read the hit piece against DeSantis last week, I thought to myself that it is just another story meant to ding DeSantis up before he announces his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. It seems that every day brings a new story or two from Democrats or Trump loyalists who are attempting to keep DeSantis out of the primary. Democrats don’t want DeSantis to be the Republican candidate and they sure don’t want Joe Biden to run against him in the general election, assuming that Biden is the Democrat nominee. Since the Democrats have very few options, it’s a safe bet they will stick with Biden in 2024.

Biden is immensely unpopular and Kamala Harris is even more unpopular. The White House is up for grabs in 2024 even though the incumbent is running for re-election. The long knives are out for DeSantis early. He isn’t expected to formally announce his candidacy until this session of the Florida Legislature is over. It all looks desperate. This story that tries to connect DeSantis to force feedings, labeled as torture by the United Nations, at GTMO is a bit too cute by half.

DeSantis was a 27-year-old JAG when he was assigned to GTMO. He is now responding to the allegations lodged by Adayfi.

Mr DeSantis was stationed on the base between March 2006 and January 2007, according to his military records, and part of his role involved hearing complaints and concerns from prisoners over their conditions.

“I was a junior officer. I didn’t have authority to authorise anything,” Mr DeSantis told Piers Morgan, in an interview to be broadcast on Thursday.

“There may have been a commander that would have done feeding if someone was going to die, but that was not something that I would have even had authority to do.”

This answer isn’t good enough for The Independent. It says that DeSantis isn’t answering Adayfi’s charge against him. This is where The Independent goes off the rails.

The Florida governor’s response did not address the central allegation from the detainee that he witnessed the force-feeding. Investigations by The Independent, The Washington Post and other outlets did not report that Mr DeSantis authorised the force-feeding – rather, that he observed and was aware of the practice.

Mr DeSantis has not responded to several requests from The Independent for comment on the allegations and for clarity about his role in the notorious prison camp.

As an assumed candidate for the 2024 election, Mr DeSantis is likely to face questions about this time in his career and what impact – if any – witnessing the treatment of Guantanamo detainees has had on his politics.

What more can DeSantis say? He explained that he was a junior officer without the ability to make decisions on force-feedings. So what if he saw any during his time there? Do progressive media outlets think DeSantis could stop them if he wanted to do that? Do they not understand the military and how it operates? DeSantis was sent there to listen to complaints by prisoners about their conditions. He could hear complaints and still see what was going on during his time there. The Bush administration denied the prisoners were being tortured. DeSantis never even specifically says he saw any force-feedings. The point is that he had nothing to do with policy decisions there nor could he either authorize them or stop them.

DeSantis argued as a congressman that GTMO should remain open. He has not publicly spoken in depth about his service in the military but that is not particularly uncommon with veterans.

It is no coincidence that Adayfi is only now coming forward with his accusation against DeSantis. He likely knows he has no legit complaint against him or he would have spoken up sooner, like when DeSantis first ran for governor. He didn’t and he didn’t during his recent re-election campaign. Only now, on the cusp of entering the Republican presidential primary, he speaks out against DeSantis. Something is fishy here. Either he is completely fabricating his story or someone is paying him a pretty penny to come out with this story.

This is what we have to look forward to in the next months as DeSantis prepares to enter the primary and the early days when he does. Trump will continue his unhinged rants against DeSantis on Truth Social. Democrats will throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. Biden will make references to Florida as a red state and how it operates. I don’t think any of this will hurt DeSantis going forward.

The report resurfaced DeSantis’ own words in a 2018 CBS interview, where he described his role advising fellow troops on their interactions with detainees.

‘They would do hunger strikes, and you actually had three detainees that committed suicide with hunger strikes. So everything at that time was legal in nature one way or another. So the commander wants to know, “Well, how do I combat this?” So one of the jobs of the Legal Adviser be like, “Hey, you actually can force feed, here’s what you can do. Here’s kind of the rules of that.’

It sounds to me that DeSantis was doing his job.

There is also this kind of nonsense on social media. A Democrat activist tried to ding DeSantis for his way of talking about his wife. I responded because it was just so dumb, even for a Friday.

He loves his wife. His wife is lovely. The monster. https://t.co/lScUMJjwVf

— Karen Townsend (@penguinponders) March 24, 2023

Maybe he’s not Shakespeare. Who cares? The sentiment is clear. That is all that matters.