Sometimes there is so much idiocy in the news that you have to unpack it layer by layer. This is the case with a statement which Florida governor DeSantis made and the way some people have described it.

In an interview, DeSantis said: “We also have a policy that if you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety. … You drive off and hit one of these people — that’s their fault for impinging on you. You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and parade you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida.”

This weekend a friend showed me a video where the speaker claimed that DeSantis had said that drivers who are surrounded by a crowd are legally allowed to hit them.

There are three layers of idiocy here: In what DeSantis said, the way it’s been characterized, and the tactic of surrounding cars.

I’ll assume for this post that he characterized the Florida law accurately. I don’t know exactly what it says, but I haven’t seen any claims that his statement is legally innacurate. Even granting this, DeSantis’s statement under the circumstances was reckless, if not malicious.

There are situations where it makes sense to keep moving when your car is surrounded, even if it means hitting the people around you. Suppose a gang of masked people holding big hammers emerges from an alley, surrounds your car, and tries to make you stop. It makes complete sense to flee, even if you put them at risk. In the best case, they’re muggers who merely want to rob you; in the worst, they’re ICE and want to abduct you.

However, it’s easy to slip from situations of genuine danger to inflicting serious harm without a sufficient reason. If a mob is blocking traffic as part of a protest, they’re violating the motorists’ rights, but running them over would be a disproportionate response. A driver surrounded by a crowd could easily panic or get angry and intentionally injure people trying to escape. DeSantis’s words could only encourage such actions. The person who gets run over might be someone who’s just been forced out into the street by the physical pressure of the crowd or by the police. The governor’s choice of words and timing was stupid or worse. He may have intended to provoke vehicular assault.

However, DiSantis didn’t make a blanket statement, as some of his critics are claiming, that drivers who are surrounded by a crowd are entitled to drive into them. He specified a situation where the mob “threatens you” and might “grab you out of your car.” The people who distort his statement by omitting these points show they can’t be trusted. If they have to mischaracterize what he said, then maybe other things also aren’t as dangerous as they seem.

Such distortions give DiSantis’s advocates a golden opportunity to cry “Fake news!” and point out the inaccuracies. This makes their followers more inclined to dismiss any report that he’s done something outrageous.

Finally, blocking traffic is an utterly stupid way to persuade people. If you’re trying to get to work, going shopping, or dealing with a medical emergency and a crowd goes out into the street to stop you, is your thought going to be, “Wow, these people are trying to make me waste gas idling and get there half an hour late. I need to support their cause!”?

Its purpose isn’t to persuade but to intimidate. The people who do it want to show their superiority over the ones who aren’t marching with them. It doesn’t even accomplish that. It makes drivers angry and more inclined to oppose whatever the crowd is supporting. But the people urging the mob don’t care. If they push someone in front of a car that doesn’t stop, so much the better. They’ve got a martyr.

So there we have it: layer on layer of stupidity. DeSantis is stupid for encouraging drivers to panic and hurt others. The people who distort his statements are stupid for thinking they can win with misleading information. The people who block traffic are stupid for thinking it helps their cause.

It burns.