Earlier this week, we covered Charlie Crist (D) saying he is open to reimplementing mask mandates in Florida if elected Governor. However, he did not say to what extent these hypothetical mandates would extend.
There is concern Crist would place a mandate on children to wear masks in order to attend school. Crist has remained mum on the topic, dodging the question at a recent campaign stop, but DeSantis War Room, who posted the footage taken by Florida conservative influencer Chris Nelson, says that "from his past statements, we know he would. "
Today, @CharlieCrist refused to answer questions about whether he would enact a mask mandate for children to attend school. But from his past statements, we know he would.
Credit to @ReOpenChris for this video 👇👇👇pic.twitter.com/l2LOkjpszo
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 #FloridaStrong (@DeSantisWarRoom) November 2, 2022
"Today, @CharlieCrist refused to answer questions about whether he would enact a mask mandate for children to attend school. But from his past statements, we know he would. Credit to @ReOpenChris for this video," DeSantis War Room tweets.
The video itself shows Mr. Nelson attempting to ask Crist if mask mandates would be implemented in schools, though Crist continually ignores him.
Nonetheless, Nelson intersperses the footage with several clips demonstrating Crist likely would implement mask mandates in schools.
The first of these is the same video which we discussed earlier this week linked above, where Crist says he is "open" to reimplementing mask mandates overall. When Nelson asks if Crist "would follow Anthony Fauci," a clip from CBS's This Morning in July 2021 where Fauci recommends masks for children in school is shown.
Immediately after, the footage cuts to a clip of Crist saying "we should have vaccine passports" that we also covered in September. This is then followed by Crist's running mate Karla Hernandez-Mats saying "there's no way that it is completely unsafe to think that we're going to give people a choice of whether or not to wear a mask when we have to be collectively responsible."
Nelson repeats these clips in between his attempts to receive an answer from Crist, closing off that it is "very sad you can't even answer. Very sad. Ron DeSantis answers my questions. Very sad, and very telling right there that he won't answer my question."