Seeing clusters of people flock to the beach as a fatal pandemic swept the nation wasn’t enough to light a fire under the ass of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. For the entire month of March, DeSantis did not implement a stay-at-home order or close non-essential businesses to help fight the spread of covid-19. His justification: The Trump administration didn’t advise him to do it, so why should he?
Or at least that’s the excuse DeSantis gave on Tuesday in response to a question about the state’s lack of blanket social distancing orders, as reported by the Miami Herald:
“I’m in contact with [the White House task force] and I’ve said, ‘Are you recommending this?’ ” DeSantis said. “The task force has not recommended that to me. If they do, obviously that would be something that carries a lot of weight with me. If any of those task force folks tell me that we should do X, Y or Z, of course we’re going to consider it. But nobody has said that to me thus far.”
DeSantis spent the month outwardly disobeying recommendations made by public health officials, including those in the Trump administration. But that didn’t stop Florida from receiving a shitton of medical supplies from FEMA while other states received very few, and it certainly didn’t stop Trump from lauding the great job DeSantis was doing leading the state.
But Wednesday afternoon, DeSantis changed his tune: Florida is shutting the fuck down.
Hm, I guess projections of hundreds of thousands of Americans dying finally did the trick!
Georgia is also finally implementing stay-at-home orders. Better late than never, I guess, but for many these actions will still be too little too late.
Want a little morsel of good news? It looks like that covid-19 approval rating bump President Trump is already deflating. According to a new Politico/Morning Consult poll, voters are already feeling a little less confident in Trump’s handling of the virus and the federal government’s response.
From Politico (bolding mine):
The survey, conducted immediately before President Donald Trump announced a 30-day extension of his physical and social distancing guidelines “to slow the spread” of Covid-19, shows 47 percent of voters feel the administration isn’t doing enough in response to the outbreak, greater than the 40 percent who feel the administration is doing the right amount.
Two weeks ago, 43 percent said the administration wasn’t doing enough in the days following the initial measures deployed to reduce the impacts of the virus, while 39 percent said it was doing the right amount.
Not a massive difference and his overall approval rating was unchanged—45 percent approve, 52 percent disapprove—but hey, improvement, right?
- In more shitty Trump news, the Trump administration has decided not to re-open the Healthcare.gov marketplace so that the countless recently unemployed Americans who are newly uninsured. [New York Times]
- Maybe it’s just some of that good ol’ Trump optimism at work, right, Mike Pence?
- BTW, did you know that the military predicted that novel coronavirus was coming years ago? [The Nation]
- It’s Census Day, and Stacey Abrams is here to help you—and Desus and Mero, apparently—get through it with ease:
- It looks like Joe Biden has some doubts that the Democratic National Convention will occur in July and figures it might be postponed or delayed, to which I say, no shit!!! [Washington Post]
- Speaking of the convention, Bernie Sanders was on The View and was asked why the hell he’s still in the race and isn’t rallying behind Biden already? Sanders insists he’s reassessing his campaign at the moment, but also asserted that it’s a free fucking country and he can keep running if he wants to. He also used this airtime to shit on President Trump and argue that medicare for all is even more important amid the covid-19 pandemic:
- Sandra Lee—Food network legend and ex-wife of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo—wants everyone to stop talking about Cuomo’s nipples already! [Page Six]
- Sen. Kelly Loeffler is still insisting that she’s innocent of any wrongdoing regarding those millions of dollars in stock she sold prior to covid-19 spreading like wildfire across the United States. [AJC]
- Gunshot victims are fighting for real estate with covid-19 patients in emergency rooms. [New York Times]