THE WASHINGTON POST: DeSantis reverses himself on coronavirus vaccines, moves to right of Trump

Early in the pandemic, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly praised President Donald Trump for the expedited development and rollout of a coronavirus vaccine. The governor’s office pushed for $480 million in pandemic resources, including media campaigns promoting the shots, according to state budget documents. And DeSantis, a Republican, even lauded the Biden administration for helping to expand access to vaccines.

“We’re having more vaccine because of this, which is great,” DeSantis said of a federal program shipping shots to pharmacies in February 2021.

But this past week, DeSantis threw himself into misleadingly disparaging the vaccines, convening skeptics to buck guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and seeking to investigate vaccine makers for fraud.

“These companies have made a fortune off this federal government imposing or at least attempting to impose mandates, and a lot of false statements,” DeSantis said at the roundtable event on Wednesday. “I think people want the truth and I think people want accountability, so you need to have a thorough investigation into what’s happened with these shots.”

A review of DeSantis’s public positions on the vaccines shows a full reversal that has unfolded gradually since 2021, seizing on the shots’ waning efficacy against new virus variants and portraying evolving scientific advice as deliberate deceit.

The hard-line position he’s now staking out is taking on additional significance: DeSantis is widely seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2024, with many Republicans wanting him to challenge Trump for the GOP nomination and some seeing vaccines as a potential wedge issue to outflank the former president to his right.

I don't know why you consider the DeSantis lockdowns a "minor thing" at all. We went through all this crap last month on several threads, didn't we? One example is posted here:

Click Here

The link in Post #47 is all the evidence anyone should need to disqualify this guy from holding public office.

Some of us were very sensitive to this kind of crap at the time because we run our own businesses and were facing financial ruin if we were locked down indefinitely.

One of the lessons I've learned over the years is that it's absolutely critical to see how a leader (in government or business) reacts in a crisis.

People in leadership positions show their primary instincts in these situations.

And I have nothing but contempt for anyone who acts like a dictator and throws all principles of freedom and liberty out the window at a critical time. This goes for DeSantis in Florida and that other nitwit in Pennsylvania (Mastriano) who was publicly calling in March 2020 for the suspension of HIPAA privacy laws and registering people with positive COVID test results in a public database.

There's a reason why the first instinct of @ssholes like this is for a totalitarian government solution to a crisis: It's because they've worked in government all their lives (and in the case of both Mastriano and DeSantis, spent long stretches of their government careers in the U.S. military) and they simply have no respect for the fundamental principle that freedom and liberty exists outside of government and is not subject to negotiation.

This episode captures the essence of Ron DeSantis in a nutshell. He had no problem shutting down businesses because he has never worked outside government in his life, and wasn't going to miss a single paycheck no matter how many lives he disrupted among Florida's business owners.

And it's no coincidence that a dope with a military pedigree would use National Guard troops to enforce an illegal travel ban.

I don't know why you consider the DeSantis lockdowns a "minor thing" at all.

Because what DeSantis implemented in Florida was VERY minor compared to the level of lockdowns Trump wanted FOR EVERY AMERICAN. Comparatively speaking, it was nothing.

- Trump wanted no Americans to meet in any groups larger than 15, anywhere.

- Trump wanted no Americans to make ANY discretionary travel, to or from anywhere.

- Trump wanted every Bar, Restaurant, and Food Court ANYWHERE to be shut down.

Yet you refuse to ever dare put Trump down for those ridiculous lockdown guidelines, he put forth for the entire nation, and instead want to rail against DeSantis for only barely doing what Trump asked in Florida. I have no idea who you think you're fooling with jive, but it certainly isn't me.

Your position would only be sound, if you admitted that what Trump wanted done to the entire nation, was exponentially worse than what DeSantis actually did in his one state. But you won't, because admitting that is admitting that DeSantis's judgement was just clearly and simply a lot better than Trump's on the matter.

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