Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Very Own MAGA Superspreader?
PROTECT YOUR OWN?
Let’s hope not. But those photos—yeeesh!
On Saturday, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republican leaders turned the backyard of the governor’s mansion into a GOP gloatfest with a pandemic twist.
Some of the top players in the party that has overseen coronavirus chaos in the Sunshine State tweeted photos and a video of DeSantis addressing a crowd of roughly 50 GOP grassroots organizers. Almost no one appeared to be wearing masks—including DeSantis, who had appeared with a mask at Donald Trump’s strange vaccine summit in D.C. on Tuesday.
One of the images, tweeted by Florida Republican Party Vice-Chairman Christian Ziegler, shows a maskless DeSantis from behind, facing his guests, a majority of whom were elderly—a population at especially high risk of death by way of COVID-19. Ziegler boasted: “Florida is in great hands and everyone in this photo is going to work like hell to crush whomever runs against him in order to keep it going.”
The GOP official retweeted the same photo the following day. This time, he identified another reliable target of Republicans and DeSantis: “It’s gonna be fun working for him and crushing the Socialists in Florida.”
The Florida GOP chairman, state Sen. Joe Gruters, tweeted a photo of the crowd from a different angle that showed him flanking the governor. Gruters wrote: “Thank you Governor @GovRonDeSantis for loving freedom and liberty and for all of your help in delivering record success this cycle here in Florida.”
Gruters also tweeted a two-minute clip of DeSantis, who slyly suggested he still backed the current commander-in-chief’s false narrative that Joe Biden only won the presidency because of massive election fraud.
“In Florida, people can have the confidence that this [election] was done above board and done right,” DeSantis crowed. “We don't wait three weeks to then change the winner with vote dumps and all this other stuff that you are seeing go around.”
Gruters, Ziegler and the GOP footsoldiers lapped it up, cheering their governor. But MAGA conspiracies aside, the scene was an emphatic prelude to the trouble a new Biden administration faces in coronavirus-skeptical states like Florida, where DeSantis has tripled down on a strategy that scoffs at mask mandates and non-essential business shutdowns and allows large gatherings of people.
In the meantime, experts said, he could have put his own diehards at risk.
“Unfortunately this event contradicts the advice of public health experts in a large number of ways,” infectious disease expert and University of South Florida professor Dr. Jill Roberts told The Daily Beast. “This event may have needlessly exposed people to coronavirus.”
more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/florida-governor-ron-desantis-hosts-backyard-maga-fest-that-could-be-next-coronavirus-fiasco?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning
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