Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told conservative radio giant and Fox News host Mark Levin that he believed President Joe Biden looked for “scapegoats” in order to obscure his own failures in the response to the coronavirus pandemic.
DeSantis spoke with Levin at length in an interview that aired Sunday evening, and explained that early on he had felt as though a focus on therapeutics would be both wise and necessary — and he believed the Biden administration’s continued attacks on him were a fair indicator that he had chosen correctly.
“As a footnote, I was in Florida — my family was in Florida,” Levin told DeSantis, commending the Florida governor for making sure that treatments like the monoclonal antibody therapy were available. “I got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, I got the booster, then I got the virus. And we looked up on the internet, and there was a center 20 miles away where we could go to get the monoclonal antibody therapy.”
“Most of these other governors and the people like [Dr. Anthony] Fauci and the federal leadership, they basically say, ‘Get a shot, wear a mask’ and they never talk about treatment. And we’ve really embraced treatment because that’s just the reality of what we’re facing,” DeSantis explained.
DeSantis also noted, in a clip that previewed the interview, that attacks from the left and the mainstream media were fair indicators that he was doing his job.
“When you’re over the target, they’re going to come at you,” he said. “If the corporate press nationally isn’t attacking me, then I’m probably not doing my job. So, the fact that they are attacking me is a good indication that I’m tackling the big issues.”
“When you’re over the target, they’re going to come after you.
If the corporate press nationally isn’t attacking me, then I’m probably not doing my job. So, the fact that they are attacking me is a good indication that I’m tackling the big issues.” – @RonDeSantisFL 👀🔥 pic.twitter.com/wsiC0eBHgS
— Team DeSantis (@teamrondesantis) January 8, 2022
“I think when you look back how the pandemic was handled there will be a whole host of the cardinal sins,” DeSantis continued. “But some of the chief will be school closures, kids were locked out of school for over a year, we have schools still closed in parts of the country, unbelievably, the extended lockdowns, the lockdowns were a disaster — but not focusing on treatment from the beginning was a huge mistake, Dr. Anthony Fauci and people like him are absolutely to blame for this, and so once we did get these treatments on line through the private sector, to ignore them and to put all your eggs in one basket was a fundamental mistake. Now, the question is, Biden did mention it once, he mentioned it after — right before they cut our supply, he said we’ll ramp up the monoclonal antibodies then he turns around and cuts the supply, we have not seen the ramp up. He had months and months after this was demonstrated to be effective to be ready for this, and we haven’t seen that. I don’t think that they’re ultimately going to embrace it.”
DeSantis argued that Biden and Fauci appeared to have “tunnel vision” with regard to their approach, promoting the vaccines as the only correct response to COVID, and that had come around to backfire on Biden in particular.
“He gets in and now you see, cases and all this like no one anticipated was even possible, and of course his central promise of his campaign goes up in smoke. As a result they try to find scapegoats and I think trying to fight with Florida or Texas is something they do to divert attention from their failure.”