'I Crumpled It Up And I Threw It In The Trash Can': DeSantis Shreds Dem COVID-19 Guidance

 

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis talks about his economic record after four years in office at a Broward County rally on Friday.

Keeping mostly to a stump speech, the Republican Governor compared his successes with jobs and efforts to reduce the cost of living to the nation as a whole under President Joe Biden. 

DeSantis is born storming the state in the final days before the midterms. Polls show him with a double-digit lead over his Democratic challenger, Charlie Frist, a former congressman and governor of the Sunshine State. DeSantis is widely considered a possible 2024 presidential contender and consistently ranks second to former President Donald Trump.

In his speech, DeSantis targeted Democrats and said:

What I think about why Florida is a free state, one of the reasons is that we had to stand up to a lot of people to keep it free. We had to stand up to bureaucrats like Fauci, a lot of leftist politicians, and a corrupt media to be able to do it.

And if you go back to the summer of July of 2020, we're in Florida, and they're just attacking me left and right, I got a letter from all Democrat members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida. They were attacking me because businesses were open; they were attacking me because schools were open because I said all schools had to be open, and they said that was bad, and they wrote me this letter saying you need to shut down the state of Florida; you need to impose mandates in Florida; and you need to have everybody shelter in place, so think about that.

I mean, this is like, what would that mean for the state? To be honest with you, it would have destroyed the state. I mean, that's what would have happened. It would have thrown millions of people's lives into turmoil; it would have cost hundreds of thousands of jobs that would have caused many thousands of businesses to go under for good, and it would have locked out millions of kids from getting an education.

They were coming after me; the media was attacking me; Fauci was attacking me, and it just seems to me as I am looking back on that. You know that leadership means being willing to stand up for the people that you represent and take the hits on their behalf, and that's what we did.

It was my job to be more concerned about saving your jobs and about protecting mine. I was willing to take the arrows, so you didn't have to, and so I thought about that letter, looked at it, and thought about all the people that it would harm if we followed what they wanted to do. I took the letter, crumpled it up, and threw it in the trash can, where it belonged.