‘What in the World is Going On Down There?’ Stephanie Ruhle Grills Marco Rubio on Florida’s Delayed Coronavirus Response
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle on Friday questioned Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Florida’s relatively late stay-at-home order amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“Can we talk about your state of Florida? One of the last states — not all the states have participated, one of the most recent to issue this stay-at-home order,” Ruhle said. “What in the world is going on down there? You have a whole lot of senior citizens and last I checked, they’re pretty high risk.”
“Yeah, so let me say one thing. I think for all practical purposes, we were in a stay-at-home order. Virtually every county in the state, if not every, had restrictions in place. Perhaps with the exception of,” Rubio replied, before Ruhle cut him off.
“Senator come on now. You and I — Stop it.”
“No I’m serious, it’s true!” Rubio insisted.
“Okay, but, sir, hold on, hold on though. Those handfuls of counties don’t have walls around them,” Ruhle continued. “You and I both saw pictures of partiers on beaches jamming on it. They’re not bound by those counties, they can get all around the state. Come on!”
“Yeah, that was two or three weeks ago. Those are not recent images. And, all of the counties that those videos reflect have issued orders or closed beaches themselves, or the cities themselves,” Rubio said. “So, what I’m trying to say is just because you didn’t have a stay-at-home order doesn’t mean people weren’t staying at home.”
“That said, I think the governor made the right decision now to implement that statewide because it creates a level of uniformity and — but the governor has — his preference is to defer to the local level. He did that during the hurricane response and it worked very well,” Rubio continued. “That’s always the preference. Local officials are on the front lines and you want to give them both resources but you also provide them the opportunity to decide what to do at the local level. That said, I think he made the right decision at this point yesterday with regards to it.”
“So you support how he’s handled it? You don’t think he should have done it two weeks ago, three weeks ago?” Ruhle asked of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
“You know, honestly, I’ve been — I think that we will have plenty of time to look back when this is all done and see all the mistakes that were made, all the errors that were committed at every level, starting at the CDC, you know, congressional oversight, maybe we should have started on the relief bill a week earlier in Congress. Right now, though, we can’t stop to do that. We have to focus on the emergency that’s at hand right now,” Rubio answered.
Watch above, via MSNBC
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