The seven-day average for Sunshine State cases is over 11,000, according to The New York Times. More than 5,000 people have died from the virus in Florida.
Even Trump, forever downplaying the severity of the coronavirus, acknowledged that Florida is not in good shape.
“I say flames, we will put out the flames,” Trump told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace over the weekend. “And in some cases we will put out only embers. We also have burning embers. We have embers and we have flames. Florida became more like a flame, but it is … going to be under control.”
In the midst of the flames, DeSantis looks like a firefighter without water.
On Monday, his coronavirus press conference was marked by protesters shouting “What a shame!” (DeSantis kept talking). Over the weekend, when a journalist noted the death of civil rights icon John Lewis and offered DeSantis the opportunity to offer his condolences, the Governor said, “Very well, yes. I appreciate the question, but we are trying to focus on the coronavirus. I appreciate it, but I’m going to let someone ask: Do you have any questions on the subject at hand? ”
DeSantis has continued to resist calls, including a recent letter from the Florida congressional delegation, to consider a mask mandate. “We have warned that it is something that could have an impact,” DeSantis said last month. “At the same time, doing the police and applying criminal penalties is likely to backfire.”
And announced earlier this month, through an executive order, that all of the state’s public schools will return to face-to-face classes five days a week in August, even when the virus breaks out in the state. (The largest Florida teachers union is suing DeSantis over that decision.)
The picture that this series of missteps and misrepresentations leaves behind is that of a governor who simply fails to rise to the massive task of managing a large state through the coronavirus crisis. The fact that DeSantis has spent May congratulating himself for expertly guiding the state through the pandemic and criticizing his critics in the media who questioned his decision to close the state late and reopen it early does not exactly help change that. image.
“None of these people knew anything about Florida, so I didn’t care what they said,” DeSantis told the National Review on May 20, words that have come back to haunt him in the past two months.
Due to how hard he has struggled to control the latest wave of coronaviruses, it is worth examining how DeSantis landed the job of governor in the first place.
DeSantis was elected to the House in 2012, and by 2016 he was already running for the Senate. He retired from that race when Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) abandoned his presidential bid and decided to run again. Two years later, DeSantis ran again for a statewide office, this time for governor, although he was considered a remote possibility in a primary against state agriculture commissioner Adam Putnam. (Putnam had left Congress in 2010 to return to the state office and begin laying the groundwork for a 2018 gubernatorial nomination.)
All of that changed on December 22, 2017, when Trump, somewhat unexpectedly, tweeted an endorsement from DeSantis. DeSantis won the August 2018 primary over Putnam easily and then narrowly defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum in the general election.
Trump, because he’s Trump, made sure DeSantis knew that his rule was entirely due to presidential backing.
“He was 3 (percent), he had no money. Someone else was 38 and they had $ 22 million in cash, right?” Trump reported at the White House in February according to the Tampa Bay Times. “I said, ‘Look, if it’s important, I will,’ because he’s been another great warrior. And by the way, he ran, I supported him, his numbers skyrocketed.”
And DeSantis has undoubtedly taken his orders to leave Trump, particularly when it comes to his response to the coronavirus. After weeks of pressure to close the state amid the growing number of cases in late March and early April, DeSantis finally relented.
Your explanation of why? “When you see the president up there and his behavior in the last few days, it’s not always the way it always is,” he said. Yes, the governor of Florida, a massively populated state with a huge elderly population, finally decided to issue a shelter order in place because he saw that the “behavior” of the president towards the virus had changed.
What DeSantis has done, and hasn’t done, in dealing with Covid-19 in Florida reveals the limits of a government philosophy focused on staying on good terms with the President of the United States.
DeSantis now leads the state to the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, and appears to have little idea of what to do next.
.
