Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Friday that he regrets not speaking out “much louder” against federal COVID-19 lockdown early on during the pandemic in 2020.
DeSantis’ made his remarks during his appearance on “Ruthless” a conservative podcast that aired Friday, when asked what decisions he would change during his tenure as governor.
“When COVID was first coming, you know, we were actually engaged in it,” DeSantis said. “I was telling Trump, ‘Stop the flights from China’ because we didn’t know what we were dealing with. But you know, I never thought in February, early March, that it would lead to locking down the country. I just didn’t. I didn’t think that was on the radar.”
DeSantis said the decision to lock down the majority of the country amid concerns over the spread of COVID-19 came with little to no warning.
“I had Pence and the CDC director down at Port Everglades talking about cruise ships, the second week of March, and no one was talking about shutting down the country,” DeSantis told the crowd and hosts.
DeSantis added that if he had known the massive lockdown “was a threat earlier,” he would “have been much louder” in his opposition to lockdown the measures.
DeSantis also took aim at Dr. Fauci accusing Fauci of relying on data from China that was not “trustworthy” as federal lockdown orders took the country by storm.
“People like Fauci panicked,” DeSantis said as he expressed frustration with the country’s lockdowns. “They were following the data out of China, which is not trustworthy.”
“Fauci funded them at the Wuhan lab, and he lied about it,” DeSantis added. “Why is he not being prosecuted for lying to Congress?”
DeSantis rightly cheered the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to block President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate.
“The Supreme Court sided with the Constitution and against Biden’s OSHA vax mandate. I called out Biden and [Dr. Anthony] Fauci’s charade from day one focused on protecting the livelihoods of Floridians. No one should have to choose between and jab and a job,” DeSantis said on social media after the court’s ruling.
The decision ended the effort to force more than 80 million Americans to get a shot, without considering reasons why they may refuse that, including prior infection.
But DeSantis, a Republican, was not so charitable to some individual Republican-appointed justices after they helped uphold a mandate for an estimated 10 million healthcare workers, according to Newsmax.
“On the nurse mandate and the doctor mandate, [Chief Justice John] Roberts and [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh joined with the liberals to allow the nurse mandate,” DeSantis said during the podcast.
“Now, in Florida, we protected the nurses, so we have people that are working. But in other states, they fired nurses who were not vaccinated.”
The governor then pointed out how asinine such a policy is.
“So, they have COVID-positive people back on. Meanwhile, the unvaccinated, likely immune through prior infection, healthy nurses are on the sidelines fired,” he said. ”How insane are these policies?”
DeSantis then took aim at Roberts, appointed by former President George W. Bush, and Kavanaugh, named by former President Donald Trump.
“Roberts and Kavanaugh did not have a backbone on that decision,” said DeSantis. “That’s just the bottom line.”
The governor noted that his administration “didn’t necessarily wait for the courts” while battling Biden’s mandate.
“I called a special session of the Legislature in November, and we provided protections so that, in Florida, you’re not going to lose your job over these shots,” DeSantis said.
“You have the right to work.”
DeSantis added that the vaccine-mandate ruling was a “no-brainer.”
“Anybody who’s not a far-left jurist was going to come out that way,” he said.”
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