In January of 2022, Governor Ron DeSantis sat for an interview on the podcast Ruthless where he propagated a fallacy insinuating ---(and bear in mind that at the onset of what was an unprecedented Global Pandemic Lockdown in early 2020 due to the deadly virus, SARS-CoV-2, also referred to as COVID-19, which, by the way, the evidence appears to indicate or moreover, strongly suggest was, in fact, a gain-of-function virus that was engineered in and likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, which, as a consequence, killed upwards of almost eight million worldwide)--- that he, unlike President Trump and similarly, I would assume, unlike the other 197 or so world leaders, you know, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, Queens, and Emperors, who felt duty bound and compelled to lockdown their respective countries out of an abundance of caution for the safety, security, and sanctity of human life due to the precarious circumstances and uncharted situation the world was thrust into due to too many obscure, indeterminate unknown variables of the deadly virus, COVID-19 that was killing people like an invisible serial killer on steroids, that he, Ron DeSantis, the God of the all-knowing, would not have called for a national lockdown of America, which Trump, in point of fact, did not call for but, rather, could only recommend as per the advice of CDC epidemiologists and virologists because, you see, under our United States Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, such a call or mandate did then as it does now fall within the purview of the "State Executive Branch" and not the "Federal Executive Branch," i.e., as in directly under the sole authority and discretion of the Governors of their respective states, and at the time and in the State of Florida's case, that would mean under "Governor Ron DeSantis" and not under President Trump's power and authority, which I am quite confident DeSantis was astutely aware of when he propagated his fallacy, you know, manipulated the facts in order to influence and turn the public against President Trump, over the "Ruthless" airwaves.
What an absurd, easy-to-say two-years-after-the-fact, sort of grandiose beating of his chest “I know better,” contrived contention to make without any logic or reasoning. A contention that I’m sure was also almost certainly meant as a political shot across the bow at President Trump in denigration of his response to covid-19, the virus that took the lives of approximately 1.1 Million Americans and almost 87 thousand Floridians, which, by the way, made Florida the state with the 3rd largest number of deaths from Covid in our 50-state union, with a daily average rate of 40 deaths per 100,000, compared to say its neighboring state, Georgia, with a daily average rate of 14 deaths per 100,000.
When you drown out all the political noise and bloviating, take a look at the actual numbers, and do the math, you soon realize that Ron DeSantis isn’t in any position to throw stones or cast false or misleading aspersions in judgment of President Trump's response to Covid, a response that, I’m sure, would be far too heavy and serious a burden for any normal human being to carry, but a response nonetheless that President Trump and most other world leaders faced head-on and shouldered with tremendous strength and resolve.
The truth is, as we all know, that is, if people are being honest with themselves, President Trump made it abundantly clear a plethora of times throughout 2020, if not every other day during what was the first year of the pandemic and his last year in office, that he did not want lockdowns, but, upon the advice of the CDC, felt compelled to recommend it; to do otherwise would have been tantamount to playing Russian roulette with the lives of the American people, after all, his first responsibility as President Of The United States was to, the best of his ability, protect and preserve the lives of all Americans, and not to risk, gamble, and play political dodgeball with even one life because it wasn’t about him or his political ambitions or trying to score political points and get one up on other politicians, which, it seems, is precisely what Ron DeSantis is doing; indeed, it was about us, ordinary every day Americans, and so you see, anything less than what President Trump did at that juncture, given the overwhelming circumstances and innumerable copious unknowns, would have been utterly negligent and quite frankly, also a dereliction of duty because, at the time, nobody knew or could predict who this virus would kill, where it would strike, and what it would destroy!
DeSantis’s all-knowing “Ruthless” claptrap critique didn’t just stop there; in addition to tooting his own horn and taking the sort of typical career politician Janus-faced dubious potshots at Trump that one would generally expect to hear on an election campaign trail, DeSantis also proceeded to, or at least attempted to, take credit for other decisions and measures Trump employed to preserve life and protect Americans during covid, like for example, the Pandemic Travel-Ban from China in mid-March 2020, where DeSantis ostentatiously indicated that it was he who, allegedly, told Trump to “stop the flights from China!” Which, to me, is a peculiar thing to say, especially after DeSantis had permitted foreign cruise ships holding ailing coronavirus passengers to not only dock but also to unload in Florida after several countries had already turned them away for the sake and safety of their citizens, and ironically, within days of Trump's travel ban from China! Explain that oxymoronic juxtaposition!
So what did DeSantis know that everyone else didn’t? Why did he sound off on a conservative podcast, saying his only regret was that he didn’t object to Trump's call for a
National lockdown? Was he inebriated, drunk on his newfound political notoriety, which then caused him to talk out of both sides of his mouth? Or was he following the advice of his establishment neocon backers Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, Jeb Bush, and other rinos? Am I missing something here? Because on April 1st, 2020, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a Statewide stay-at-home lockdown order for the entire State of Florida, too.
It wasn’t merely President Trump who issued a “15 Days to Slow the Spread” guideline; practically all 197 world leaders peppered across and within planet earth's four hemispheres did too, because, like Trump, they also felt compelled to do so out of an abundance of caution for the safety, lives, health, and well-being of their fellow countrymen, which is why I assume, Ron DeSantis also handed down a lockdown order for the State of Florida. And so, between this obvious esoteric bit of hindsight bullshit, cloaked as some sort of intuitive insight or second instinct, but truth be told, a conscious lie, and the actual covid measures DeSantis enacted, that he is pretending he didn't, but in actuality did, and where irony and his hypocrisy muddle together, my question becomes, why then is DeSantis, who, by the way, happens to be the only politician who’s been “conspicuously evasive” about whether or not he got the vaccine booster, now blasting Trump over calling for a national lockdown when, in fact, he too issued one for the State of Florida? Well, the answer is quite simple, politics, political games, chicanery, lies, and the 2024 Presidential Campaign, of course!
And while DeSantis is now touring the country claiming that Florida was open for business without restrictions throughout the pandemic, which, as you can all see, read and, I hope, conclude from his stay-at-home order that is utterly false, erroneous, and in layman’s terms, it's called a lie, not only did DeSantis issue a lockdown order, but he also gave local authorities significant power and leverage to continue to impose their own restrictions. What’s more, he wasn’t the first Governor in the country to revoke his order either; in fact, Georgia and a few other states rescinded their stay-at-home orders before Florida, and in point of fact, DeSantis actually rolled his back in Phases.
What’s more, and not to put too fine a point on it, Kristi Noem, the Governor of South Dakota Dakota, was the only United States Governor who never actually issued a stay-at-home lockdown order, not Ron DeSantis, even though many are now under the illusion that he was. Furthermore, Schools in all 50 states, including Florida, closed for the remainder of the 2019-2020 academic year, and not all states except for Florida. Nor was Florida the only state to reopen schools at the beginning of the 2020-2021 academic year either, despite DeSantis’s claims to the contrary; schools in Florida began unlocking their doors starting August 10th, 2020, while Schools in Georgia, and several other Republican states began to reopen their classrooms on August 7th, 2020, giving parents and students the option of in-person or online learning, and, in fact, President Trump even tweeted on July 6th, 2020 that “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” Indeed, my family and I moved from New York to Georgia during the summer of 2020, and I can say with absolute confidence that pretty much everything was open for business. In Fact, Georgia set Record-Breaking Economic Growth Rates During COVID-19, so I don’t quite understand what DeSantis is playing at here, what his game or motive is for propagating misleading information because I know the free state of Georgia was open for business too!
Out of curiosity, of course, excluding Donald Trump and all other heads of state, is or was Ron DeSantis some sort of scientific genius, an Albert Einstein, or perhaps a God, a deity endowed with mystical, magical powers, or perhaps a wizard with a crystal ball and an anomalous talent to prognosticate and see through time and space to prophesize how deadly this coronavirus was, and where and when it would strike, who it would kill, and what it would destroy? And if so, why didn’t he notify President Trump and other heads of state before it leaked and spread throughout the country and the world? Because it seems to me that DeSantis is implying that he had all the solutions at the onset of this Pandemic when not another living breathing soul on the face of the planet did, except for, say, the scientists who were manipulating the structure, function, and potency of this virus at the Wuhan Institute Of Virology in China, or possibly Peter Daszak, and also Anthony Fauci since, after all, it was he who ultimately authorized the Funding that was used in Gain-of-Function experimentations at the Wuhan Institute Of Virology.
In so far as the Covid Vaccine goes, Trump clearly is pro-vaccine, and that’s ok; it is his right as an individual, just as much as it is mine or your right to be pro or anti-vaccine, but that said, and in light of various rumors being propagated across Facebook, by, no doubt, DeSantis loyalists, it must also be said and reiterated that as President of the United States, Trump never mandated or even suggested mandating that people take the vaccine; it was quite the opposite. He always felt and stated that it was a personal choice between a person and their doctor and not within the government's purview or authority to impose such a draconian law upon people, so to suggest or intimate otherwise is again another easy-to-debunk absurd lie.
As everyone well knows, Joe Biden, Democrat politicians and bureaucrats, and the left-wing media were the only people, institutions, and organizations pushing for a vaccine mandate. And truth be told, as everyone also well knows, it was President Trump who strongly endorsed and consistently advocated for the use of other therapeutics as an alternative means to treat covid, whether it was monoclonal antibodies, Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir, paxlovid, or Ivermectin, and if I recall correctly, and I am correct, President Trump led a televised White House round table conference on the use of alternative therapeutic covid treatments!
In conclusion, as multiple candidates prep, prime, and gear up for the presidential primaries, there will be varying factions among the Republican constituency, with some candidates, obviously, garnering more support than others, so if you want to make a case for or against a particular candidate, whether it’s Donald Trump, Ron Desantis, Nikki Haley, or someone else, first do your due diligence, research, and cross-check information, show some integrity, intellect, and a healthy measure of skepticism, because as candidates prepare for battle, settle into their respective corners, and the race kicks off and gradually heats up, so too will the political games, chicanery, fallacies, and smear campaigns.
Don’t help propagate false and slanderous accusations against a candidate in order to bait their supporters into your tent. It rarely works (unless, of course, it involves clandestine intergovernmental schemes with big tech), pisses people off, it’s disingenuous, manipulative, and oftentimes malicious. Worst of all, it carries with it the very real possibility of causing potentially deadly and deleterious societal unrest, which we all witnessed during the 574 Violent Riots, dubbed the 2020 “Summer Of Love” that the media described as ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Riots; and for what it's worth, it’s what Democrats and RINOs do, not us, not Constitutional Conservatives Republicans!
We are better than that!
Be Peaceful & Patriotic.
Linda Genzel Editor @ Wecu New.
Opinion.