During the first Republican primary debate Wednesday, Governor DeSantis blasted former vice president Pence for the Trump administration’s record of supporting lockdowns and ushering in invasive public-health mandates during Covid.
“Why are we in this mess?” DeSantis said in response to sparring between Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy on the cause of the runaway federal spending of the last few years.
“Part of it, and a major reason, is how this federal government handled Covid-19 by locking down this economy,” he said. “It was a mistake. It should have never happened. And in Florida, we led the country out of lockdown, kept our state free and open. As your president, I will never let the deep state bureaucrats lock you down. You don’t take somebody like Fauci and coddle him. You bring Fauci, you sit him down, and you say, ‘Anthony, you are fired!'”
DeSantis’s comment was his first in-person confrontation with Pence over the Trump administration’s pandemic legacy since announcing his candidacy. The attack from DeSantis was also by default directed at former president Trump, who chose not to participate in Wednesday’s debate. Instead, Trump sat down with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for an interview, which was aired Wednesday night.
Since he entered the 2024 race, Trump has fired shots at DeSantis’s governance in Florida, saying in November that his chief rival was an "average Republican governor with great public relations, who didn't have to close up his state, but did, unlike other Republican governors."
As president, Trump issued guidance that states should lock down to "slow the spread” of the virus. DeSantis, like many other governors, initially followed those recommendations, before switching course after realizing the serious harm of school closures and business restrictions.
DeSantis was not the first governor to begin reopening. However, when Georgia governor Brian Kemp started reopening in April 2020, Trump criticized him at a White House press conference, alongside Dr. Fauci, for acting prematurely.
"I told the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, that I disagree strongly with his decision to open certain facilities," Trump told reporters.
In response to Trump’s allegations, DeSantis has called him out for his cozy relationship during the last year of his tenure with Fauci, who rubber-stamped most of the CDC’s Covid directives on masking and vaccines, including for children, social isolation.
Comments
Post a Comment