COVID-19 is back in the news just in time for the 2024 election. That includes the Republican presidential primary, particularly between former and potentially future President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
DeSantis has touted how he's handled COVID in Florida and how he would handle it at the federal level. He's prioritized freedom from lockdowns and from mask and vaccine mandates. He's also hammered Trump for his refusal to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci.
On Wednesday, DeSantis held a press conference with Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo and other health experts. Ladapo, as he had done previously, expressed his concerns about how hastily the mRNA booster was approved and advised against its ise for those under 65.
As a press release highlighted the following actions DeSantis took as governor:
In May of 2023, Governor DeSantis signed legislation codifying permanent COVID-19 protections in the state and positioned Florida as the national leader for medical freedom:
- Permanently prohibited COVID-19 vaccine passports in Florida;
- Permanently prohibited COVID-19 vaccine and mask requirements in all Florida schools;
- Permanently prohibited COVID-19 masking requirements at businesses; and
- Permanently prohibited employers from hiring or firing based on mRNA jabs.
In 2021, Governor DeSantis signed legislation to protect Florida jobs and parents’ rights to make health care decisions for their students, banning private employer vaccine mandates and mask mandates across the state. Governor DeSantis continues to safeguard Floridians’ freedoms and ensure no one is discriminated against based on their COVID-19 vaccine status or is subject to a two-tiered test and mask discrimination policy from employers.
Last Wednesday, DeSantis posted a video ad about COVID. He mentioned what's become perhaps his major contrast to Trump, his view on Fauci. "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 in, you sit him down and you say Anthony you are fired," DeSantis insisted.
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Firing Fauci was a major point discussed during an interview DeSantis gave to Dave Rubin last Wednesday. The two discussed DeSantis' handling of COVID for several minutes.
Rubin mentioned how, that same day, Trump had had an interview with Hugh Hewitt in which he said Fauci was not a "big player" in his administration, and claimed he wasn't "allowed" to fire Fauci.
The governor began by addressing what Trump had said. "Well, first of all, it's important to point out for a long time that was not his excuse. His excuse had been that if you fired Fauci, both the Democrats and the media would have pitched a fit, which of course is 100 percent true," he offered. DeSantis also made it about leadership, though, saying "that's the price of leadership," adding "you got to stand up and do what's right."
"Clearly, he could have been fired from the White House Task Force," DeSantis continued. "There was no obligation to run him out at press conference after press conference, have him doing media interviews. During the height of the COVID stuff in 2020, Fauci would do local hits in Florida media attacking me for having schools open and some of these other stuff. So there was no obligation to do that."
DeSantis spoke to other concerns about Fauci as well. "I think you could have also fired him from NIH because he had basically committed misconduct with the gain of function. You also had him saying that it was naturally occurring when they knew it was a lab leak. All that stuff has come out now, so I think, yes, you're fire him."
"Here's the thing, Dave, if it's the right thing to do, you do it. If they sue you, they sue you, but you had the basis to do that and you should have done it and the country would have been better off had he done it," DeSantis said, bringing it back to leadership.
The discussion also involved what DeSantis would do for the rest of the country if he were president.
Listing examples about who went wrong in what agencies, which requires a "cleaning out," the governor also listed states that got it right, but nevertheless warned "there are parts of this country that were really, really harmed because of the Fauci-ism."
"We need a reckoning for what they did to this country," DeSantis offered. When it comes to mentioning how "nobody's been held accountable" for being wrong on masks, school closures, and vaccines, DeSantis warned "it's my view that until there's accountability, they're going to keep trying it again."
"We are going to bring reckoning. We are going to turn those agencies inside and out. We don't need Fauci’s running around those agencies. We need people like my Surgeon General in Florida... who was right against the lockdowns. He was right against the force masking from day one. That's what we need. We need people like Dr. Bhattacharya from Stanford," DeSantis continued, offering examples.
The governor also offered an angle on the cost of COVID. "The federal government went additional $6 trillion in debt over COVID with the response. That's more debt than we racked up in like the first 200 years of this country. And yet people don't want to talk about it. The only person that stood up at the time was Congressman Thomas Massey," a Kentucky Republican who has endorsed DeSantis "And he was pilloried, but he was right. So we are going to have a reckoning when I'm the president."
During that interview between Trump and Hewitt, the host had referred to keeping Fauci as "the biggest knock on your presidency."
"No, no, no, Dr. Fauci was there. First of all, he’s civil service, and you’re not allowed to fire him. But forget that because I don’t necessarily go by everything," Trump offered, "but Dr. Fauci would tell me things, and I wouldn’t do them in many cases. But also, he wasn’t a big player in my administration. Dr. Fauci became a big player in the administration of Biden. He’s a very big player in Biden’s administration."
Trump also spoke about DeSantis being someone who "shut down Florida." As Fox News summarized:
Trump has consistently criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his closest opponent in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, for his response to the coronavirus pandemic and did so again in the interview with Hewitt by previewing what he would say to DeSantis if questioned during a debate about not firing Fauci.
"It’s so easy to respond," Trump said. "He said he wouldn’t let anybody come in. He shut down his beaches. He shut down the entire state. He tries … he has a selective memory. He shut down. [Gov.] Henry McMaster didn’t shut down South Carolina. [Gov.] Kristi Noem didn’t shut down South Dakota."
Trump continued, "He shut down Florida. It was tight as a drum. He had vax lines. He was vaxxing everything. Now, he talks about the vaccinations this and that."
Trump added that DeSantis was "not in the category" of conservative governors who did a "good job" handling the coronavirus.
"By the way, just so you know, it sounds very negative, third-most in deaths from COVID? Unfortunately, Florida." Trump said. "Florida was third-worst in deaths … that’s a horrible, that’s a horrible statistic. But that’s a statistic that sort of counts. Ron was the third-worst in terms of actual death from COVID. Ron is No. 3."
The DeSantis campaign has argued that Florida was fully open in early May 2020 after implementing COVID restrictions in early April and has pointed to DeSantis banning mask and vaccine mandates along with gain-of-function mandates in the state.
"We did the right thing. We closed the country down."pic.twitter.com/vH7f0xLSAZ https://t.co/PsxNn3yjah
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) September 7, 2023
Last Thursday, the Trump campaign sent out an email to do with "Ron DeSantis’ Lying Record on COVID." Examples included DeSantis' praise for Fauci from early on in the pandemic. DeSantis also expressed support for Operation Warp Speed for vaccines, and for then President Trump himself, including leading up to the 2020 election. Also mentioned are the repeated claims about the lockdown measures DeSantis engaged in. Such measures also took place early on.
One of the links shared, from the Tallahassee Democrat dated March 25, 2020, highlighted local control that communities had. "Gov. Ron DeSantis Wednesday continued to defend his decision to not shut down the entire state, and praised President Trump for declaring that a major disaster exists in Florida," the piece also read.
... you guys ok? @TrumpWarRoom pic.twitter.com/61FfPIpsdS
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) September 7, 2023
Ron DeSantis’ Lying Record on COVID pic.twitter.com/1oXAf6JGhH
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) September 7, 2023
DeSantis was asked about and responded to the claims during an appearance last Friday on "America's Newsroom," which he referred to as "total nonsense."
When confronted by co-host Bill Hemmer, how "on April 1, 2020, just to be clear, you did allow the local authorities to determine who goes on a beach and who doesn't. And I think the rule you made that day was the limited to 10 people or less," DeSantis stressed the concept of "a local decision."
"So that was a local decision. But you know, those first few weeks, we followed some of the federal guidelines. I've always said that. But then I was looking at the data myself, and I made the decision that we were going to chart a separate course. And so we did that, and clearly Florida boomed as a result," DeSantis explained.
This feud between Trump and DeSantis is nothing new. In May, Trump offered that "even [former Gov. Andrew] Cuomo [D-NY] did better" than DeSantis on COVID.
Rubin and DeSantis discussed that criticism as well. "Do you want to hit him harder? I understand you are running a campaign and you're running a state. But what do you think the policy should be on this sort of thing because in some ways it seems like a no-win situation with the base to some extent," Rubin wondered.
In addition to mentioning that the Trump family moved to Florida during his governorship, and reminding that so many people visited Florida, DeSantis also offered that Trump may be hurting himself.
"No, look, I think honestly, I think he hurts himself. Nobody in the Republican base thinks New York handled COVID better than Florida. Nobody believes that. It's not believable. And in fact, he doesn't believe it because he said for years how good Florida did. He said I was one of the great governors in America. All of this stuff was kind of gospel. Nobody ever questioned it until about three days before the midterm elections, he saw that I was fixing to win a landslide and he started attacking me," DeSantis offered. "And then that's basically it. Just because he believes that I'm a threat to his ambitions, that's the only reason he's saying this. If he didn't believe that, he wouldn't be saying any of it. So it's obviously bogus. I mean, half the country visited Florida over COVID. And you're trying to say California, New York and Illinois, handled it better, give me a break."
"So sometimes I think, you know, you should be responding. But I think sometimes, like the more he does that, I think it helps me because I kind of wish like he had broader reach with some of his social media. Because I think just putting that stuff out there, I think it hurts his credibility more than anything, especially because he's on the record saying how good a job we've done in Florida in the past, and especially because his entire family moved to Florida under my governorship," DeSantis continued.
We're still almost four months away from the Iowa Republican caucus on January 5, 2024. Time will tell if COVID remains a major enough factor in the news and if that has an effect for either Trump or DeSantis in the polls.
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