As President Joe Biden continues to fume over missing his self-imposed goal of having 70% of Americans vaccinated by the Fourth of July, he and the legacy media have increasingly turned their ire against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R).
Here are five of the most unhinged attacks from the last five days alone:
1) Jim Acosta: Call the Delta Variant the ‘DeSantis Variant’
On “CNN Newsroom” Saturday afternoon, Jim Acosta said Ron DeSantis bears so much responsibility for the spread of the Delta variant that it should be named after him.
“DeSantis is a graduate of Harvard Law and Yale. … Anybody who’s gone to an elite university not only passed a science class, but should also value expertise,” he said. “And the experts are telling us to listen to the science, that it’s better to be vaccinated, that masks will help in areas where COVID rates are soaring.”
Acosta said that DeSantis, and Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and John Kennedy (R-LA) “may end up owning the pandemic, because they’re prolonging it.”
“Perhaps it’s time to start naming these new variants that may be coming out after them. Instead of the Delta variant, why not call it ‘The DeSantis variant’?” Acosta asked. “We could sell beer koozies that say, ‘Don’t Florida my Fauci’ and use the money to help pay for all the funerals that’ll be coming in the days to come.”
2) Mika Brzezinski: DeSantis, Leader of a ‘Death Cult’
On Monday’s “Morning Joe,” MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski named the governor of the Sunshine State as the leader of a dark and shadowy “death cult.”
“In Florida, we have a governor more interested in playing politics than saving lives,” she said before repeating Acosta’s statement that the Delta Variant should be called “The DeSantis variant.”
“Are you kidding me?” she said, her voice rising. “This is completely preventable, and the governor of Florida owns this one. The most tragic part of this story is that almost all of these hospitalizations and deaths would have, and could have, been avoided if misguided Americans had not followed the crazed teachings of a growing death cult and instead just followed the advice of their family doctor. It’s pretty easy, and they won’t do it.”
“That’s death cult material,” she reiterated.
3) Associated Press reporter Jonathan Lemire: DeSantis ‘Tops the List’ of Governors Making People Sick
Despite appearances, President Joe Biden hasn’t taken aim at Governor DeSantis and certainly doesn’t want a confrontation with the potential 2024 Republican presidential nominee, according to Jonathan Lemire, who covers the White House for the most widely distributed news service, The Associated Press.
Lemire told MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams” on Friday that President Biden has “taken square aim in recent days at the Republican governors who, as he put it, have gotten in the way of trying to safeguard the American people. And Governor DeSantis certainly tops the list.” Thus, DeSantis is responsible for Biden’s decision to lash out at him publicly.
“This is not a fight the White House wants,” Lemire told guest host Ali Velshi, but it is evidence of the frustration that the president and senior officials in the West Wing and health officials elsewhere in the government feel about the American response right now to the pandemic, that this is something where they should feel like, we should be further ahead than we are.”
Yet the White House “can’t give [the vaccines] away … because [of] the influence of the former president and his disciples including the Republican governor of Florida … And people are getting sick.” Lemire predicted, “This sort of stern, almost scolding, tone is now what we’re going to hear from the president.”
4) Teachers Union Leader Randi Weingarten: DeSantis Leads ‘Disinformation Campaign’ that’s ‘Hurting’ Children
Ron DeSantis personally leads the vast army of COVID-19 deniers and misinformation agents, said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.”
“The disinformation campaign and what the people like [Texas] Governor [Greg] Abbott and Governor DeSantis are doing, they are hurting people in terms of their public health by this disinformation campaign,” said Weingarten.
She then dragged Fox News into the indictment. “I know I will now get a huge amount of pushback from Fox when I’m about to say this,” she said. “Fox — that disinformation campaign is terrible.”
5) Democrat Charlie Crist: An ‘Authoritarian’ Who is ‘Playing Russian Roulette’ with Floridians’ lives
Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who is running to unseat DeSantis, got a free campaign commercial on “Cuomo Prime Time” last Thursday.
“Our governor is playing Russian roulette with the people of Florida,” Crist, a former Republican-turned-Democrat, told Chris Cuomo. “It’s appalling to see. And I think he’s doing it for political reasons that are beyond his reelect in 2022,” said Crist (who may have attacked him for political reasons of his own). “I think it goes to his desire to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024.”
He then equated DeSantis’ decision to bar school districts from issuing mask mandates with fascism. “I don’t know what kind of authoritarian leader he’s trying to be,” Crist said.
"For this governor it seems to be safety last and it's awful, it's truly awful," says former Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist, who plans to run against Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. pic.twitter.com/EpVyeWgEsc
— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) August 6, 2021
Governor DeSantis’ Office Responds:
The governor’s office says this vastly misstates the facts about the state and the governor.
“Governor DeSantis has made over 1,600 public remarks speaking positively of the vaccines, most recently at his press conferences last week,” Governor DeSantis’ spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, told The Daily Wire. She pointed to the governor’s record of success.
Florida has the second-largest proportion of senior citizens in the nation, behind Maine. Yet the state’s death rate per 1,000 over the last week is slightly below the national average, including states like New York and Pennsylvania, which have taken far more restrictive measures.
“Florida demonstrates that lockdowns of the entire population are unnecessary; their harms outweigh any possible benefit. Much more beneficial is focusing protection on the most vulnerable individuals, as Governor DeSantis has done,” said Pushaw. Nearly 99% of the state’s senior citizens have had at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Mayo Clinic, above the national average.
“For proof of legacy media corruption, look no further than the legacy media’s reporting on the COVID surge in Louisiana versus Florida,” she continued. “Louisiana has a higher COVID prevalence than Florida. I do not believe that’s because of anything that Governor [John] Bel Edwards did or didn’t do; the virus appears to be having a seasonal surge in the South. But it’s simply outrageous for the media to blame Florida’s governor for every COVID spike in Florida, when they do not hold Democratic Governors (such as the governor of Louisiana) to the same ridiculous standard,” Pushaw said.
“It is obvious that legacy media, and their allies in the Democratic Party, are afraid of Governor DeSantis – because his leadership in keeping Florida free demonstrates that their preferred policies of lockdowns and mandates are pointlessly harmful,” said Pushaw. “They cannot admit they were wrong, so they attack Governor DeSantis instead of reporting the facts about Florida.”
“Such transparent political activism masquerading as journalism may explain why Americans’ trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low,” she concluded.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.