A.G. Gancarski
The war between Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and state Republicans is no longer quite so one-sided.
Fried, who spent much of the Session maligning an attempted “partisan power grab” targeting her office, has spent much of the post-Session slamming the Governor’s coronavirus response as too little, too late.
On Friday, Republican Party of Florida Chair Joe Gruters fired back with a white-hot salvo, asserting that Fried “should be ashamed” of her “unseemly self-promotion.”
“Nikki Fried should be ashamed. She is pulling the weakest trick in the book at the worst moment by attacking Gov. DeSantis in the midst of a crisis just to score some cheap political points,” Gruters asserted, before posing seemingly rhetorical questions.
“Doesn’t she have an office she should be seeing to instead of using state resources to try to further her political future? Shouldn’t she be trying to accomplish something other than trying to divide Floridians to promote herself?
“In these extraordinary times of breathless media reporting and heated rhetoric from backseat partisans everywhere,” Gruters deemed it “heartening to have the steady hand of Gov. Ron DeSantis at the helm.”
“Instead of inciting panic and uncertainty, Gov. DeSantis and his team are wisely weighing new information each day as he guides us through this pandemic,” Gruters asserted, adding that the Governor “is resolutely leading the state through the coronavirus outbreak with measured, informed, effective actions to protect the health and rights of Floridians.”
Gruters’ comments are a response to an attack Fried lobbed toward the Governor earlier Friday, in which the Commissioner charged DeSantis with “failing to lead.”
“Florida needs leadership now more than ever,” Fried said, “but Governor DeSantis is failing to lead. His safer-at-home order is filled with glaring loopholes as the details emerge.”
She was referencing an executive order this week that issued carveouts from bans on mass gatherings for churches, now seemingly put on the honor system for social distancing guidelines.
Fried also took issue with the unemployment claims system, which has been exposed as critically flawed and incapable of dealing with the hundreds of thousands of Floridians suddenly out of work.
“He’s deflecting responsibility for his unemployment system fiasco, leaving millions of Floridians without the economic help they need indefinitely. At a time when our state most needs steady, accountable, transparent leadership, the Governor is unwilling or unable to provide it. Governor, you need to correct these failures now, before our people and economy are further endangered.”
The Governor did not face the media Friday, with Democrats zeroing in on cataclysmic failures with said unemployment system.
Ironically, Gruters himself took aim at the system this week, saying “someone should go to jail” for its failures, which include a $77 million website approved in 2013 that has collapsed under the weight of too many claims in the collapsed coronavirus economy.
The prospective arrestees, he clarified, would be the contractors hired to build the site.
15 comments
Janis Lentz
April 4, 2020 at 10:01 am
Gruters is a Florida Reoublican SHILL trying to cover up DeSantis’s total lack of competence in doing the job of governir! He is way over his head, and waited way too long to issue this stay at home order, as his BOSS, Donald Trump ordered him to do! As fir the unemployment website, it has NEVER worked and was a colissal waste of taxpayer funds!!! Open up the Unemployment offices that ceepy Rick Scott closed 12 yrars ago!!!
Ward Posey
April 4, 2020 at 10:04 am
GOP should go jump off a cliff. Ignorant little cowards, phony vets, and non-servers, gutless little punks and wenches trying to play grown up. They are total sewer rats who should be deported to Antarctica.
John Kociuba
April 4, 2020 at 11:44 am
Continuum:
Everyone knows women who use eyeliner for eyebrows are freaking crazy! She’s easy on the eyes like all COMMUNIST RED SPARROWS but I’m not falling for her wicked witch commie toto!
The Communist Democrat Party is evil! Praise every foulness to children. Make excuses for the most evil of dictators. Promote psychological fear instead of truth and hope. Despise freedom and God
Democrats are the ugliest, meanest, loneliest, physically sickest, unintelligible, more criminal per population capita than Republicans because their ideology is SATANIC! The soul is rotten which rotten the human form.
Pedro
April 4, 2020 at 11:16 pm
If you say its so nutcase!
Andre
April 5, 2020 at 9:36 am
You just described Donald Trump John!
Thomas Knapp
April 4, 2020 at 11:58 am
Nikki Fried’s made it quite clear that she’d run her own grandmother over, then throw the transmission into reverse and go bump da dump a sencond time make sure granny was dead, if she thought that would get her a millimeter closer to being governor.
I voted for her for Ag Commissioner in 2018 because she wasn’t a Republican and because there weren’t any other options on my ballot. I won’t be making THAT mistake again.
Domino
April 4, 2020 at 1:28 pm
Just waiting for the MMJ cures COVID-19 narrative so Nikki and her millionaire weed partner can become billionaires.
Thomas Knapp
April 4, 2020 at 1:32 pm
Well, for those who enjoy its effects, I have to think that cannabis would at least make “shelter in place” a little more tolerable 😉
Domino
April 4, 2020 at 9:23 pm
MMJ cures cabin fever. There’s an angle!
Pedro
April 4, 2020 at 11:29 pm
All theses republicans and whiners must feel so manly ganging up on a woman, but that is the way cowardly repubs operate. They don’t have better ideas or have to wait for word from their dimwit leader before they can make any decisions. Fried is right, Florida needs a real leader who will make the important decisions when they need to be made and for the right reason.
Pedro
April 4, 2020 at 11:32 pm
All theses republicans and whiners must feel so manly ganging up on a woman, but that is the way cowardly repubs operate. They don’t have better ideas of their own and have to wait for word from their dimwit leader before they can make any decisions. Fried is right, Florida needs a real leader who will make the important decisions when they need to be made and for the right reason.
Thomas Knapp
April 5, 2020 at 8:55 am
Nikki Fried and I have a lot in common — both of us want to run my life.
She doesn’t get to.
Neither do you.
You don’t have to like it. That’s how it is whether you like it or not.
matthew weidner
April 5, 2020 at 11:30 am
Fried was the only state “leader” that grasped the peril we’re in and was actually doing something about it. How many people will be sick and die because Desantis (Trump’s man child) refused to act. Desantis is still refusing to report nursing home data. If the numbers arw not reported does this mean the residents aren’t sick?
Glenn
April 6, 2020 at 11:46 am
She needs to worry about her own offices not taking fingerprints for concealed carry permits essentially blocking 2A rights outside the home for thousands of permit seekers. The lawsuit on the way will be a great reason to remove her from her current position before she can be voted out.
Thomas Knapp
April 6, 2020 at 11:48 am
There’s a simple fix for that:
If the state isn’t processing concealed carry permit applications, no permit is required to carry concealed. Problem solved.
Which should be the case anyway.
Comments are closed.