#Biden’s war on DeSantis is about kneecapping a GOP governor

The number of migrants crossing our southern border continues to break records, crime is surging and the COVID vaccination effort has stalled. So naturally, the White House spent the past week picking fights with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

President Biden said of DeSantis’ refusal to implement vaccine passports, “I say to these governors: Please help, but [if] you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way.” 

The number of COVID cases in Florida has risen lately, that’s true. But suddenly that’s the fault of a governor? A year ago, when Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee, the spike in COVID cases was entirely the fault of then-President Donald Trump. 

When the Northeast suffered a second COVID wave in the winter of 2020-2021, the buck stopped with the president — not Gov. Cuomo (D), or New Jersey’s Gov. Phil Murphy (D) or Pennsylvania’s Gov. Tom Wolf (D). 

That New York and New Jersey had the highest COVID death rates in the country, the Democratic line went, wasn’t the fault of their ­respective governors — it was the president’s alone. 

But now that cases are high again, the president is no longer in charge, and it’s somehow governors who are to blame — but only those from the opposite party. As Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’ press secretary, pointed out on Twitter, “Louisiana, another southeastern state, broke its all-time COVID-case record. Seasonal virus, regional pattern. You just don’t hear as much about other states as you do about Florida. I wonder what’s different about Louisiana’s governor?” 

The answer: He’s a Democrat.

Democrats want to treat the pandemic as a litmus test for good and bad behavior, judged according to purely political metrics. Despite the worldwide failure of masks and lockdowns, Democrats continue to believe that if Americans had just locked down harder and longer, or masked more, we would have gotten to COVID zero. Australia shattered this mythology recently, as it headed into its sixth lockdown. 

DeSantis refused to follow this deranged path. When the Sunshine State reopened beaches in the spring of 2020, we were told that mass deaths would follow. They didn’t. When Florida reopened most businesses in summer of 2020, we were told that mass deaths would follow. They didn’t. When Florida reopened schools in fall of 2020, we were told that mass deaths would follow. They didn’t. 

It couldn’t have been easy for DeSantis to buck the trend. But opening up and moving on was the right thing to do, and other states followed his lead. 

The White House is now picking a fight with him precisely because he was successful in opening his state and getting the rest of the country to follow. DeSantis is a target because he won’t bend the knee and continue to implement measures that have failed everywhere else. 

The media are toeing the White House line by claiming that DeSantis wasn’t proactive enough in promoting vaccination. That’s simply wrong. I resided in Florida in the months the vaccines were made public. I got vaccinated in Florida. DeSantis was all over the state motivating people to get jabbed. 

Remember, the original DeSantis-bashing story, pushed by activist media like “60 Minutes,” was that he put his supporters at the front of the line to get the vaccine. Would a vaccine skeptic do that?

Florida is 23rd in vaccination rates, in the middle of the pack. Yet the prestige press treats the state like some backwater, where the population prefers medieval cures over modern medicine. 

COVID case rates ebb and flow. With three vaccines available, we will either learn to live with the virus — or remain prisoners to a hysteria that DeSantis has tried so hard to defeat. 

Pushaw told me her boss “doesn’t have time for political slap fights; he just wants to keep Florida free. Whether Washington, DC, likes it or not, Gov. DeSantis will continue to defend the rights of all Floridians.” Maybe it’s Biden who should get out of his way.