Maddow Blasts Vaccine-Skeptic Florida Surgeon General After Former Colleagues Claim He Never Treated Covid Patients

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow slammed Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo in a brutal segment that questioned both his ethics as a doctor and experience treating Covid patients.

Ladapo has been broadly criticized for expressing doubt about the efficacy of Covid vaccines, as well as declining to wear a mask in a state senator’s office — despite her specifically requesting him to do so due to her cancer diagnosis.

On Monday, Maddow questioned Ladapo’s assertions that he treated Covid patients early in the pandemic at UCLA.

While UCLA was not as forthcoming about Ladapo’s role, MSNBC was able to speak to several of his former colleagues.

“Before that press conference he took part in on the steps of the Supreme Court in July 2020, in which he billed himself as one of America’s frontline doctors, four sources who worked alongside him at UCLA tell us that they do not believe that Dr. Ladapo had actually treated Covid patients at all at UCLA when he stood up there and called himself a frontline doctor,” Maddow said.

The MSNBC host then referenced op-eds written by Ladapo, in which he claimed he was taking care of Covid patients at UCLA.

“One of our sources who was part of the UCLA Covid-19 task force tells us this: ‘I was part of the team that was taking care of Covid-19 patients in the beginning of the pandemic, and Dr. Ladapo was not part of that team,'” Maddow said.

She went on to note that the network had obtained scheduling documents from June 2019-September 2021 for the medical center.

“While these documents show that numerous doctors at that hospital were assigned to work in the Covid unit… at no point was Dr. Ladapo scheduled to treat Covid patients during that time period we were able to review,” she said.

A few moments later, Maddow brought on Dr. Bernard Ashby, who was among more than 350 doctors to call on the state Senate to scrutinize Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ (R) selection of Ladapo as Surgeon General.

Ashby criticized Ladapo going against the wishes of state Senator Tina Polsky to wear a mask, saying “that says everything you needed to know” about Dr. Ladapo.

“Simply put, he’s being unethical and that in and of itself should disqualify him,” Ashby later noted of the mask refusal.

Asked by Maddow about the group of doctors calling on the state Senate to look into his nomination, Ashby claimed that he is concerned Ladapo is being used as a “prop” by DeSantis.

“The fact that he is being used as a prop for Gov. DeSantis shows that he is consistently making poor judgement,” Ashby claimed. “He’s not even from Florida. He’s from California, he has no ties to Florida whatsoever. And Gov. DeSantis brought him in to be a prop.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.