Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis unloaded on members of the media Wednesday over their extremely grim predictions for his state, saying that the media “waxed poetically for weeks and weeks” about how bad Florida would look.
WATCH:
DeSantis says any insinuation Florida doesn’t have best data is typical partisan narrative.
“You’ve got a lot of people in your profession who waxed poetically for weeks and weeks about how Florida was going to be just like NY.”https://t.co/jTzJmKk8X0 pic.twitter.com/1sGw3Z1P3V
— WFLA NEWS (@WFLA) May 20, 2020
“Our data is available, our data is transparent, in fact Dr. Birx has talked multiple times about how Florida has the absolute best data, so any insinuation otherwise is just typical partisan narrative trying to be spun,” DeSantis said.
“And part of the reason is because you got a lot of people in your profession who waxed poetically for weeks and weeks about how Florida was going to be just like New York: wait two weeks Florida’s going to be next, just like Italy, wait two weeks.”
“Well hell, we’re eight weeks away from that, and it hasn’t happened. Not only do we have a lower death rate–well we have way lower deaths generally–we have a lower death rate than the Acela Corridor, DC, everyone up there,” the governor continued.
“We have a lower death rate than the Midwest–Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio–but even in our region Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia–Florida has the lower death rate. And I was the number one landing spot from tens of thousands of people leaving the number one hot zone in the world to come to my state.”
He concluded, “So we’ve succeeded and I think that people just don’t want to recognize it because it challenges their narrative, it challenges their assumption, so they got to try to find a boogeyman–maybe it’s that there are black helicopter circling the Department of Health. If you believe that, I got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.”
Florida’s DeSantis, along with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, have been the de facto public faces of relaxed coronavirus restrictions, leading many in the media to predict the worst for the two states. (RELATED: Florida Coronavirus Cases Far Lower Than Predicted; Gov. DeSantis Still Struggling In The Polls)