Politico: Gov. Gavin Newsom's Camp Says Sean Hannity, Ron DeSantis Cheated in Debate

On November 30 we saw the "Red State/Blue State" debate on Fox News, hosted by Sean Hannity. California Gov. Gavin Newsom took on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and it didn't go so well for him. He claimed that more people were moving to California than Florida, that crime is worse in Florida, and that Florida was a lockdown state.

Not shockingly, Politico reports that Newsom's camp says Hannity and DeSantis cheated.

More distrust and accusations were spilling out from the event. Hannity told Newsom staffers that both sides agreed not to bring props or graphics with them on stage — just a pen and pad of paper, they said. DeSantis’ camp says that wasn’t their understanding of the network’s rules, and DeSantis brandished allegedly lewd content permissible in California in a segment about book bans at schools.
The other document DeSantis flashed to great fanfare was a map of Newsom’s hometown of San Francisco covered in brown splotches that the Florida governor said represented places where human feces were found on the city’s streets.
“He carried around porn and poop in his suit jacket,” the Newsom aide said.
A Fox News spokesperson said “the word ‘props’ was never discussed ahead of the debate, not one time. The final agreement simply stated that neither side (Newsom or DeSantis) can use multimedia production. That was an issue about whether each side wanted to do a short production on what makes their individual states great at the start of the debate.”
Newsom’s staff said there also was a rule that Fox and Hannity wouldn’t use multimedia during the debate. They contend that was confirmed to them by Fox producers in the pre-debate walk-through a few hours before the event started. Hannity proceeded to show several graphics on screen — mostly unfavorable statistics about crime and other issues plaguing California. When confronted about the apparent bait-and-switch, a Fox producer shot back that, technically, the entire stage could be classified as multimedia, the Newsom aide said.

“He carried around porn and poop in his suit jacket,” the Newsom aide said.

The poop map aside...the comment about him having porn is really interesting -- given that this was his point.

We must have it in school libraries...but don't dare bring it to a debate!
— SanchoPanzy (@SanchoPanzy) December 1, 2023

So he knows he got his ass kicked?
— Greg Parks (@Parksabouts) December 1, 2023

Newsom still claims he won the debate despite all the cheating.

This is debate denial.
— dubs (@mrbigdubya) December 1, 2023

Winners don’t cry this much. It’s clear even Newsom knows he lost.
— Carlos Rango (@DirtyBird_1982) December 1, 2023

It was not fair of Hannity to put up statistics that Newsom had to try to deny.

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