By Talia Kaplan
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis argued that Florida “focused on lifting people up,” while “lockdown states” are “putting people out of business” amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“There's a whole bunch of things we’ve been doing for COVID, but at the same time, we’ve lifted our state up, we’ve saved our economy and I think we’re going to be first out of gate once we are able to put COVID behind the country,” DeSantis told “Sunday Morning Futures” during an exclusive interview. He stressed that by keeping the state open “you actually have new entrepreneurs coming to start new ventures” and new restaurants and hotels are opening in Florida.
“So people view Florida as the place where they can follow their dreams,” DeSantis continued, stressing that “it is a free state.” He acknowledged that during the first few months of the pandemic, “when everything was grinding to a halt, we had a lot of problems like anyone, particularly because tourism stopped. But since then we now have an unemployment rate that is significantly less than the national average,” he continued.
DeSantis also stressed that Florida is “doing a lot to focus on protecting elderly people from COVID,” noting that “about 1.75 million seniors” have been vaccinated so far, which he said is about 40% of all seniors in the state.
He told host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, “States that are always held up by people in Biden's administration, like New York, have way higher per capita patients hospitalized for COVID right now.”
“Biden is a lockdowner, his advisers are lockdowners. Lockdowns don't work. We’ve demonstrated that.” He then said that Florida is “not turning back” and the Biden administration “will not be able to get away with targeting Florida.”
DeSantis noted on Sunday that “Florida schools have been open the whole school year.
Every parent in Florida has the right to send their child to in-person instruction, every worker has a right to work and earn a living and put food on their table and every business has the right to operate and consequently, our state is doing very well compared to these other states in terms of education and economy,” he continued.
The full-length opinion originally appeared in the Fox News