Biden’s inexplicable “there’s no federal solution” to the COVID pandemic kind of popped the cork on pent-up Republican frustration with the alleged President’s arbitrary, capricious and science-free orders and mandates.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis immediately unloaded on Biden, demanding he scrap his “useless” vaccine mandates after he told the leaders of 25 states that there is “no federal solution” to the COVID-19 pandemic, his office said on Tuesday.
“Look, there is no federal solution,” Biden said. “This gets solved at a state level.”
“And then it ultimately gets down to where the rubber meets the road, and that’s where the patient is in need of help or preventing the need for help,” Biden added.
DeSantis' spokesperson told DailyMail.com that the president is 'abdicating responsibility and shifting blame' to the states.
“More Americans have died of COVID-19 under Biden than under Trump. Now that Biden has admitted to the nation that he has no plan to ‘shut down the virus,’ and that there is ‘no federal solution,’ we expect him to withdraw the unconstitutional and useless federal vaccine mandates,” DeSantis' office said.
The Daily Mail article reminded us Biden notably promised to “shut down the virus” on the 2020 presidential campaign trail. Now just over a year later, the new Omicron variant is fueling another wave of new infections, Biden's vaccine order is facing legal roadblocks, and his administration's delayed response in rolling out COVID-19 tests is under fire.
DeSantis Press Secretary Christina Pushaw responded to Biden stepping on his own message by issuing a series of tweets and retweets mocking the president. One contrasted Biden’s statement with his warning in August that DeSantis, who has opposed vaccine and mask mandates in the state, should “get out of the way” of people “trying to do the right thing.”
“Shot, chaser,” she wrote.
“What a difference a year makes,” Pushaw wrote in a separate tweet noting Biden’s promise last year to “shut down the virus, not the country,” reported Michael Moline for The Florida Phoenix.
DeSantis' office also recalled Biden's message to Republican governors in August who were blocking mask and vaccine mandates: “Please help. But if you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way.”
'Governor DeSantis defied this petty tyranny and continued to “stand in the way” of unconstitutional federal overreach. The governor stands for parental rights, individual liberties, and medical freedom, including the freedom to access treatments for COVID-19 that are proven effective,' the governor's spokesperson told DailyMail.com.
The governor also reminded us that the Biden administration restricted Florida's supply of monoclonal antibodies as a form of COVID-19 treatment, noting it “had months to prepare for the predictable winter surge and neglected to do so.”
“Now, Biden admits ‘there’s no federal solution’ because he is abdicating responsibility and shifting blame — politics as usual,” DeSantis' office said.
Helen Aguirre Ferré, a former DeSantis aide now serving as executive director of the Republican Party of Florida, had this to say on her Twitter thread: “@joebiden failed at handling the pandemic and now punts to governors like @RonDeSantisFL who actually solves problems.”
“Complete collapse of an administration … ,” wrote Evan Power, chairman of the Leon County GOP, above a picture of Biden walking toward a Marines helicopter for a trip to his home in Delaware.
The response reflects a long-simmering conflict between the president and a governor running for reelection (and perhaps for president in 2024) over how best to respond to COVID, which has killed 817,000 Americans and more than 62,000 Floridians. Florida, among other states, is in court challenging the Biden administration’s attempts to enforce workplace mandates for vaccinations.
DeSantis argues vaccines and face masks should be a personal decision and persuaded the Legislature in a special session last month to outlaw vaccination mandates unless employers offer opt-outs.
Back in September Biden called Republican governors like Ron DeSantis “cavalier” for resisting his call for far-reaching new federal coronavirus vaccine requirements he claimed would curb the then surging California Recall (or delta) variant.
Here’s what Governor Ron DeSantis said back then, and nothing has changed, "When you have a president like Biden issuing unconstitutional edicts against the American people, we have a responsibility to stand up for the Constitution and to fight back, and we are doing that in the state of Florida," DeSantis said. "This is a president who has acknowledged in the past he does not have the authority to force this on anybody and this order would result potentially in millions of Americans losing their jobs. I think we should be protecting people's jobs, not trying to kick people out of work right now. And that's exactly what we're going to be doing in Florida."
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