Top Three Takeaways – April 6th, 2021
- Nothing new. In the 60 Minutes hit piece on Governor DeSantis. Just the introduction to a national audience of the previously debunked claims of impropriety regarding Florida’s vaccine rollout. Notably, if you’re familiar with Palm Beach County politics, you’re aware that featured sources included a who’s who of those who are more interested in political ambitions than solutions. This includes Melissa McKinlay who has been more interested in opposing Governor DeSantis’s policy in Commission meetings than listening to Palm Beach County’s Health Director in those meetings. Or Omari Hardi who literally called national news outlets to publicize in advance a scene he’d staged at the Lake Worth Beach City Commission meeting with mayor Pam Triolo. In Fact, the reporting was so demonstrably false Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner put out a statement saying this: The reporting was not just based on bad information – it was intentionally false. I know this because I offered to provide my insight into Palm Beach County's vaccination efforts and '60 Minutes' declined. They know that the governor came to Palm Beach County and met with me and the county administrator and we asked to expand the state's partnership with Publix to Palm Beach County. We have confronted this pandemic for over a year. Our residents, like all Americans, are tired. And the media is making it worse. They are hellbent on dividing us for cheap views and clicks. '60 Minutes' should be ashamed. (It) kneecaps their narrative.
- Repeating lies doesn’t make them true and no matter how many times Nikki Fried or Charlie Crist allege impropriety it doesn’t make it so. The frustration is running high because despite Florida having the 7th least restrictive pandemic policy in the country, we maintain below average cases and deaths per capita and far better rates than other large states like California and New York who locked down far harder. Additionally, as the governor has pointed out, his Senior’s First policy on vaccinations has worked. Florida’s tenth nationally in the mortality rate for seniors – despite only ranking 41stper capita in vaccines received from the federal government to date. That’s right, 40other states have received more vaccines than Florida per capita – yet Florida’s outcomes are the tenth best for those most vulnerable. So yeah, to date there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing but that doesn’t stop the Fried’s, the Crist's, or politically ambitious local ankle bitters and their allies in the news media, like CBS from false and misleading claims. That’s because...
- They’re afraid that Ron DeSantis is an even more effective version of Donald Trump. Numerous politicos have observed that DeSantis seems to balance the Trump platform with a degree of political pragmatism that Trump lacked or chose not to employ. The most notable example of how effective DeSantis has been and is politically – is what Democrat mega donor, attorney John Morgan, recently told Politico about DeSantis. Quoting Morgan regarding pandemic policy: “He won”. But let’s be clear. It’s the political class that looks at everything, including a pandemic, as a political game. It isn’t so much that DeSantis won. It’s that Florida has been winning and DeSantis’s pragmatic policies have been a key reason why. And when DeSantis’s political adversaries, including in news media, can’t attack his policy because of our relative success – they attempt to attack the person by lying about his policy. That’s illustrative of how afraid they are of how effective he is and can be. Especially with DeSantis being considered the current 2024 GOP presidential favorite.
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