Thread by @fjb4587

President Trump called out Ron DeSantis on his COVID response last week. Once again, he’s right. Here’s a long thread to debunk the lies from DeSantis.

1. Lockdown

Trump never locked down the country, despite what right-wing influencers say. Governors did, including DeSantis.

There’s no executive order from him to enforce lockdown. He merely put out a GUIDELINE, which many DeSimps see as proof of him shutting down the country. But even in the guideline, there was no mention of shutting down businesses, and the first line was “follow local authorities”

Which means the lockdown was entirely governors’ fault. When DeSantis issued the statewide lockdown order, he said he consulted with Trump and Trump “agreed” with his approach. Which means Trump wasn’t even the one who came up with the lockdown plan. DeSantis was.

When asked if it was the surgeon general that changed his mind on lockdown, he said it was himself. He blamed Trump for signaling for a lockdown, but later admitted that there was no such thing in the guideline. Then he said he wouldn’t reopen by Easter, despite what Trump asked.

He said he wouldn’t close beaches in March, but closed beaches in Broward and Palm Beach only 2 days later. And there were even people arrested for being on the beach. Same applies to churches. And there were people arrested for not wearing a mask, and yet to be pardoned.

He had very strict travel restrictions for people from other states. People from NY, NJ, CT and LA had to quarantine for 14 days. He even had border checkpoints on the state line. It was not lifted until August. Texas had restrictions too but was lifted much earlier.

Florida started reopening on May 4, but that didn’t include Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. These counties were still in complete lockdown. And businesses were only allowed to run at 25% capacity. What made it even worse was that bars, nightclubs and gyms were kept closed.

On June 23, 2020, he brought his “grim reaper” Halsey Beshears to his press conference, threatening to take away business licenses if they didn’t follow the guidelines.

He claimed to have fully reopened Florida on September 25. However, he still allowed local governors to limit capacity on bars when he could’ve banned it. He claimed he had barred them from fining people for not wearing masks, yet people were still being arrested for that in 2021

On April 27, 2021, DeSantis extended state of emergency for another 60 days, which allowed local governments to implement mask mandates and other restrictions. He ended it on May 3, 2021, which further confirmed there were restrictions before that.

The worst part, is that he’s lying about “keeping Florida free”. Even Charlie Crist called him out during the debate.

2. Vaccines

DeSantis had been promoting COVID vaccines for a very long time, despite that he’s now pretending to be anti-vax. Here’s a compilation of him promoting the vaccines.

In addition, he even pressured hospitals to distribute more vaccines. He used “accountability” as the title of this video on his YouTube channel.

He even used a 100-year-old veteran to promote the vaccines by having him vaccinated live on national TV

DeSimps like to say “he has changed”. He has never said he was wrong about the vaccines. He just took a 180° turn and pretended that he had never promoted the vaccines at all. If there are so many vaccine victims, why hasn’t he even apologized for promoting the vaccines once?

DeSimps also like to say Trump is still promoting the vaccines. Trump has never asked young people to take the vaccines. In fact, he has been against vaccinating them since the beginning. He’s also against vaccinating children. twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Trump never dismissed the safety concerns over COVID vaccines either. He said there are pros and cons. He just thinks there are more pros than cons.

But guess who supports vaccinating children? Ron DeSantis. He said he wouldn’t order vaccines for them, but he did it in the end.

DeSantis is claiming he’s fighting big pharma, and yet he was the one who signed bill that blocked people from suing healthcare providers over COVID-related incidents.

He even signed a bill, SB 2006, with a hidden vaccine mandate. “If there is no practical method to isolate or quarantine the individual, the State Health Officer may use ANY means necessary to vaccinate or treat the individual.” You can’t make this up.

He claimed he banned vaccine passports. But they still existed in Jan 2022. Even Matt Gaetz had to remind him on that. In fact, it’s 2023 already and he’s just getting started to ban COVID vaccine passports, when COVID is no longer relevant. Imagine that.

3. Impact on economy

DeSantis signed an moratorium on evictions and foreclosures and extended it up until October, which hurt a lot of landlords.

Florida’s had the 18th lowest unemployment rate in 2019, and dropped to 36th in 2020. This shows his COVID response is a failure.

Conclusion: DeSantis did a horrible job on COVID. While better than blue states in general, it’s highly overrated. He’s also horrible on COVID vaccines. He’s the opposite of what people thinks. The worst part is his lies about it. Rewriting history alone should disqualify him.