Azealia Banks praises DeSantis leadership, says she feels ‘way safer’ in Florida than in Los Angeles

Singer Azealia Banks offered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis her ringing endorsement in a new interview, proclaiming that she feels “way safer” living in the Sunshine State under the Republican’s leadership than she ever did in liberal California.

The “212” rapper, who relocated to Miami in 2021, weighed in on the potential 2024 GOP frontrunner as she recalled spending the pandemic in Los Angeles “isolated and scared,” surrounded by virtue-signaling wealthy liberals displaying “Black Lives Matter” signs at their homes and businesses.

“Every which way I turn there’s a Black Lives Matter sign, and then we’re watching swathes of Latino people die every day because they’re considered essential workers,” she said in a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian published last week. “I had to go because I can’t do this — either Covid was gonna kill me, or depression.

The 31-year-old Harlem native, who previously endorsed Donald Trump for president, said that in Los Angeles she felt like she needed a gun for protection, while in Florida people “mind their f—ing business.”

Banks also attributed her newfound sense of security and comfort in part to the Florida governor.

“He’s focused on the basic s–t,” she said. “There are elderly people in our country without walkers, who don’t have the money to get a septic tooth pulled. If we’re talking about divvying up healthcare funds, those situations should take precedence to facial feminization surgeries and stuff like that.

She continued: “I mean, I get it, but that’s a cosmetic surgery. Like, does your penis work? Can you pee? You’re not as in trouble as the older woman who can’t afford her dialysis. I think DeSantis is practical about a lot of things.”

Banks also drew a sharp contrast between DeSantis, whom she praised for his common decency, and Kanye West, with whom she collaborated on never-released songs more than a decade ago.

West, 45, has been mired in scandal after making a series of anti-semitic comments and openly praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

His unhinged outbursts cost him a fortune in busted endorsement deals after a string of high-end companies, including Adidas and Balenciaga, severed ties with him.

Banks slammed the troubled “Gold Digger” rapper, now formally known as Ye, as a “grifter” and unreservedly raked him through the coals for revealing during a presidential campaign rally in 2020 that he and then-wife Kim Kardashian had considered aborting their daughter North.

“Just because you can’t get attention from Kim Kardashian, you turn it on your f—ing daughter,” Banks ranted. “Kanye, you’re an abusive a–hole and you’re a p—y for picking on that little-a– girl.”

“You are the last person we need to hear from about black fatherhood and the black family unit,” she concluded.

Banks herself is no stranger to erratic behavior, which has included picking fights with celebrities like Lil’ Kim and Nicki Minaj, public outbursts, run-ins with paparazzi and bizarre comments about witchcraft, Sweden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In 2015, Banks was accused of biting a female security guard at a nightclub in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, resulting in an assault arrest. That was followed by an altercation with a photographer just months later.

During a court appearance in November 2016, Banks hurled profanities at another photographer, whom she slammed as a “s—head” and an “a–hole.”

In 2018, Banks live-tweeted waiting for days at Elon Musk’s home to finish up her musical collaboration with his then-girlfriend Grimes.

“The Big Bang Beat” songstress described her experience camping out on the Tesla founder’s property as “a real life episode of ‘Get Out.‘”

Banks’ long history of tantrums also includes causing a scene on a Delta Air Lines flight from New York City to LA in September 2015, followed just weeks later by an alleged assault on another security guard at the Los Angeles hotspot Break Room 86.  

The Guardian interview came weeks after Banks once again made headlines when she canceled shows in Australia, declaring that the Land Down Under makes her “utterly miserable.”