Marco Rubio defends Ron DeSantis from ongoing criticism on stay-at-home order delay

Image via AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio shielded Gov. Ron DeSantis from criticism over his delay in instituting a statewide stay-at-home order, arguing that criticism should wait until after the state and nation get through the novel coronavirus crisis.

The Senator did say DeSantis was not immune from criticism prior to that order being implemented. But with the order now in place, Rubio asserted, any further criticism should be held until an after-action review on how the crisis was handled.

Rubio spoke Friday to MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, where he was probed about DeSantis’ decision-making. Florida had lagged behind other states with similar case numbers in terms of implementing such an order, as DeSantis demurred to allowing local governments to act.

“What in the world is going on down there?” Ruhle asked. “You’ve got a whole lot of senior citizens. And last I checked, they’re pretty high risk.”

“I think for all practical purposes we were in a stay-at-home order,” Rubio responded. “Virtually every county in the state — if not every — had restrictions in place, perhaps with the exception of a handful of counties.”

But those local actions were scattershot at times, even prompting DeSantis to occasionally step in and take action himself as municipalities delayed.

“Senator, come on now. You and I — stop it,” Ruhle interjected.

“No, I’m serious. It’s true. It is,” Rubio replied before Ruhle stepped back in.

“OK, but those — sir, hold on,” Ruhle said. “Those handful of counties don’t have walls around them. You and I both saw pictures of partiers on beaches jamming on it, right? They’re not bound by those counties. They can get all over the state. Come on.”

“Yeah. But that was two or three weeks ago,” Rubio answered.

“Those are not recent images. And all of the counties that those videos reflect have issued orders and closed beaches themselves, or the cities themselves. 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. There were orders, and virtually all of the large metropolitan counties, all of Southeast Florida, had these orders. Duval County had these orders. Central Florida had these orders about a week and a half ago. All of the Tampa Bay region had these orders.”

While many of those images were from a few weeks ago, some Florida beaches remained open as recently as last weekend — including in Volusia County, home of Daytona Beach.

Rubio did say the statewide order was the right step, as it created uniformity. Rhule then asked whether Rubio thought DeSantis should have issued the order sooner.

“So you support how he’s handled it? You don’t think he should have done it two weeks ago, three weeks ago?” she asked.

“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,” Rubio said.

“Right now, though, we can’t stop to do that. We have to focus on the emergency that’s at hand right now. And then when this is over — and we hope it’ll be over sooner rather than later. It’s going to take some time — I think we’re going to have plenty of time to look at our response and figure out what was done right and what was done wrong. That’s going to happen. Accountability needs to happen.”

He added, “We can’t change the past. We can learn from it. But we can only influence the future.”

Of course, to learn from the past, that requires critical thinking of how those past decisions were handled. And while Rubio said further criticism of the decision should be held until after the crisis, Ruhle pressed the Senator on some of his own criticism of the media which occurred in real time.

Rubio accused media members of expressing “glee” after the United States surpassed China in confirmed coronavirus deaths.

“Some in our media can’t contain their glee & delight in reporting that the U.S. has more #CoronaVirus cases than #China,” Rubio wrote on Twitter, adding it was “grotesque” and “bad journalism.”

Rubio rightly pointed out those China numbers should be viewed with intense skepticism and are likely under-reported — though it’s unclear by how much. But his scolding of media members drew outrage as some members of the media had recently succumbed to the virus.

“I’m a journalist,” Ruhle said. “We’re not just some personalities. You called out journalism, and I need to understand why on earth you did this.”

“Well, because there are some journalists that were doing exactly what I said, and I posted some of their tweets,” Rubio said.

“An editorial cartoonist I think is considered a journalist. A columnist for GQ is considered a journalist. A magazine that’s distributed at least online is considered journalism. And every single one of those and others had headlines about how we’re number one. They got that trending last Friday.

“Now, that’s why I used the word ‘some’ just like often I read reports about how some Republicans are doing this or some members of Congress are doing that. I don’t know what other word to describe who’s doing something and who isn’t. And I don’t know what other word to use to describe these kind of people.”

Ruhle challenged Rubio on why he lobbed that jab at journalists, but now says the Governor should be shielded from criticism over his stay-at-home order decision.

“When the orders were not in place for the Governor to do that, I didn’t say people couldn’t criticize the decision not to implement an order,” Rubio said. “But now that decision has been made.”