DeSantis Touts Coal Ovens, Gives Trump a Glimpse of Pizza Parlor Prowess

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has visited a New York City pizza restaurant and helped out in the kitchen months after former President Donald Trump said that the governor would be working "in a pizza parlor" without his help.

DeSantis, Trump's top GOP opponent in the 2024 presidential election, visited Grimaldi's Pizzeria and touted the benefits of coal-fired pizza ovens in an appearance that aired Thursday on Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime. According to host Watters, the Florida governor asked to visit the pizzeria with him after learning of New York's supposed plan to ban coal- and wood-burning pizza ovens.

While there is no plan to actually ban the ovens, the city's Department of Environmental Protection has proposed a rule, which isn't finalized, that may force restaurants using some older ovens to install devices that would reduce particulate emissions, which can be harmful to the environment and people's health.

DeSantis argued, while sharing a pizza with Watters, that the proposed regulation was evidence that "the left" wants to "control behavior." He also referenced the controversy involving gas stoves earlier this year, when a number of prominent conservatives erroneously claimed that the government was "coming for" the stoves.

"They just want to control," DeSantis told Watters. "You have an itch on the left, they want to control behavior ... We say the same thing with COVID; a lot of that wasn't about your health, it was about [them] wanting to control your behavior. They just don't want people to be happy and be able to make their own decisions."

"They were going after gas stoves in Florida," he continued. "We made them tax-free. We may have to do some incentives for the coal-fired pizza, because you know what? We'll take it."

Shortly before sitting down for pizza and an interview with Watters, the Florida governor was shown speaking with the Fox News host and one of the pizzeria's co-owners in the kitchen before helping out by personally shoveling a pie into the oven.

Three months earlier, during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump said that DeSantis "would be working either in a pizza parlor place or a law office right now" if Trump had not helped him win the Florida gubernatorial election in 2018.

When asked to comment on the images of DeSantis helping out at the pizzeria, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek that "President Trump is always right."

Cheung was not alone in making the connection between the governor's appearance on Fox News and Trump's previous comment. Others who mocked the moment on social media included Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller and former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski, who shared a video that spliced together Trump's comments and DeSantis at the oven.

"This primary is over," Filipkowski commented while tweeting the video. "Trump owns DeSantis."

Others who voiced their disapproval of New York's coal-fired pizza oven regulation proposal included Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who claimed in a video that the government was "coming for coal oven pizzerias" and threatened to "come for their throat" and "never let go until I squeeze the life out of them" if they targeted one particular restaurant.

The reaction was even more extreme on Monday, when right-wing activist and artist Scott LoBaido reportedly delivered a fiery speech aimed at "woke" lawmakers outside New York's City Hall, before throwing slices of pizza over a gate and yelling, "Give us pizza or give us death!"

Newsweek has reached out to the DeSantis campaign online for comment.