Jim Acosta Slams Ron DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Greene For Covid Comments: ‘Many of Our So-Called Leaders Are Acting Like Spoiled Brats’
CNN’s Jim Acosta tore into “so-called leaders” on Saturday for dividing public trust in the Covid-19 vaccine and masking.
With a chyron that read, “Why Aren’t We on the Same Team When it Comes to Covid?” Acosta began by noting several prominent athletes, such as Kirk Cousins and Lamar Jackson, have declined to disclose their vaccination status, calling it a personal decision.
“Now, it would be really cathartic to sit here and go off on multimillionaire athletes acting like spoiled brats,” Acosta said. “But why attack them? They too live in this country. And too many of us have been subjected to Covid lies and anti-science hatred for well over a year.”
Acosta then played a clip of parents protesting a school’s mask mandate in Tennessee, before pivoting his attention to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
Responding to comments from Greene earlier in the week that humans “can’t live forever” and getting sick is normal, Acosta said, “Yes, we can’t live forever. But that doesn’t mean we have to die now. You can get a vaccine and postpone dying. Live now, die later.”
“Down in Florida, Gov. Ron Desantis has backed off of his threat to dock the pay of school officials who put in place mask requirements for students as the delta variant is surging across the state,” Acosta continued. “He couldn’t get his way so it sounds like he’s throwing in the towel.”
“How can you blame our athletes, when many of our so-called leaders are acting like spoiled brats?” Acosta added.
Florida reported a record-high number of cases last week, averaging 21,630 new cases per day. Local school districts’ decisions to instate mask mandates come as the U.S. reports the highest rate of children hospitalized for Covid-19, the majority of whom are in Florida and Texas.
DeSantis, however, did not rescind his threats to school officials due to the increase in cases. His administration instead acknowledged he has no control over their pay since they are not state employees.
“Therefore, the only way the state could tailor the financial penalty would be to withhold an amount of funding equal to their salaries,” DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, said in an email to the Miami Herald. “In that event, it is possible that the officials who are violating the law could decide to take funding from other needs in their own district, in order to pay themselves salaries. It wouldn’t be fair to the students, but it would technically be possible.”
DeSantis also seemed unconcerned by the increasing number of hospitalizations among children, saying the numbers are proportional to what it had been before since hospitalizations across the board have increased.
“There’s been no change in the proportion of pediatric patients who are COVID positive,” he said on Wednesday. “Obviously, we have more people that are COVID positive in the hospital than we did six weeks ago, so the raw numbers are increasing for everybody.”
Watch above, via CNN.
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