DeSantis Slams Trump for Not Taking ‘Responsibility’ for Covid Failures, Obedience to Fauci

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis slammed his rival, former president Donald Trump, for not taking responsibility for his administration’s pandemic response policies and empowerment of Dr. Anthony Fauci while on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom Friday.

After playing a clip in which Trump defended his record, assailed DeSantis’s, and argued that he could not have fired Fauci, DeSantis declared that “at the end of the day, the leader’s got to take responsibility.”

“I think it was pretty clear early on in Covid that Fauci was misfiring, he was elevated to where his pronouncements were basically viewed as gospel around the country and we rejected that,” said DeSantis. “And we fought. When we reopened the state, he criticized us. When we had kids in school, first state in the country to have all school districts, he criticized us. When we said no vaccine mandates, they criticized us. So we had to chart the course, and obviously the results speak for themselves because people flooded into Florida.”

Fox News’s Bill Hemmer followed up by noting that Trump was “making claims that Florida had the third highest death rate in America.”

“He says you shut down Florida, he said ‘tight as a drum,’ he said vax lines, now on April 1st, 2020, just to be clear, you did allow the local authorities to determine who goes on a beach and who doesn’t. And I think the rule you made that day was to limit it to ten people or less. Do you disagree with any of that?” asked Hemmer.

“So, right, so that was a local decision. But, you know, those first few weeks we followed some of the federal guidelines. I’ve always said that. But then I was looking at the data myself, and I made the decision that we were going to chart a separate course. And so we did that. And clearly, Florida boomed as a result,” replied DeSantis before returning to his critique of Trump:

But I would note this because this is important. You know, Donald Trump’s reelection campaign in October of 2020 was running ads bragging with Fauci, saying ‘Trump did everything I told them to do.’ They were putting that out. They were bragging about it. And then on January 19th, 2021, Donald Trump’s last day as president, he gave Fauci a presidential commendation. So those were wrong to do that.

And clearly, I think the important thing is this looking forward, we need accountability for what went wrong because those people in positions of authority at the CDC, Fauci, they lied about lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates. They were wrong. It did a lot of damage around this country. And I know that because the people that were harmed, a lot of them came to Florida and would tell us about it. So we need a reckoning so that this never happens to our country again.

Watch above via Fox News.