Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) continues his rivalry with President Joe Biden (D).
This time, Governor DeSantis is accusing the President of failing to address his “central campaign promise.” The President is currently facing a significant strike in his approval rating ahead of the 2022 midterm election, and political pundits argue this could result in a “red wave” come November.
In a message sent to supporters, Governor DeSantis argued that “throughout the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden demagogued Donald Trump over COVID, blaming Trump for COVID cases while promising that he would ‘shut down the virus.’”
Instead, DeSantis expressed that Biden’s “tune changed after seeing his playbook of mandates and restrictions is failing.”
“Joe Biden told governors from across the country that there ‘is no federal solution to COVID’ and it is now ‘up to the states to figure things out,’” DeSantis disappointingly added, commenting on the disagreement he’s shared with Biden regarding lockdowns, vaccine mandates and vaccine passports.
“When the going got tough, Joe ran back to his basement,” DeSantis concluded.
The Florida Governor has received criticism from Democrats regarding his own views on the pandemic, and he faces 3 challengers in Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried (D), Florida Rep. Charlie Crist (D) and state Senator Annette Taddeo (D) who are focused on unseating the Governor in November.
Speaking of the Biden Administration, DeSantis affirmed that “this isn’t leadership” and that the Administration “deserves to be held accountable AND called out.”
Florida is currently experiencing surging cases of COVID-19, and health experts were questioned on the rising cases in the country. They were also asked what the Biden administration could have done differently to respond to the issue.
Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Health Security, shared that “the Biden administration should have explicitly articulated and adopted a harm reduction approach to COVID-19. Such a stance would help Americans learn how to risk-calculate their activities around what is a ubiquitous and unavoidable infection.”
In order to accomplish this, Adalja explained that “harm reduction could be accomplished… with wider availability of rapid home diagnostic tests – these technologies make it so much easier for people to gauge the risks of social interaction.”
