Gov. DeSantis now says ‘media downplayed’ COVID-19 threat

Gov. Ron DeSantis reversed course on media criticism of recent days.

The Governor had been claiming that media overhyped the threat of COVID-19 relative to Florida.

However, the narrative changed, for whatever reason, Monday.

Addressing reporters at a briefing in Tampa, DeSantis said that “a lot of folks in the media downplayed it, said it was less than the flu, don’t worry about it.”

The Governor did not specify who in the media had taken those positions, but the statement contradicted previous messaging on the subject.

Last Tuesday, for example, the Governor regaled national media, then Tallahassee media, with descriptions of a doomsaying media proven wrong.

DeSantis began the day on “Fox and Friends,” serving up red meat about skeptics, such as the “Acela Media,” who falsely prophesied that COVID-19 would hit Florida like it did New York.

He ended the day in Tallahassee, mocking those who doubted his steady hand at the wheel.

“You go back a month, month and a half, report after report saying it was just a matter of time that Florida’s hospital system would be completely overwhelmed,” DeSantis said.

“Those predictions have been false,” the Governor said.

“Those predictions were made time and time and time again, and they were wrong,” the Governor thundered. “We did not go the way of Italy. We did not go the way of New York City.”

“Did you guys say that Florida hospitals would be overrun?” DeSantis said to a Miami Herald reporter.

“A lot of this is politically motivated. A lot of the outlets have clear agendas,” DeSantis said, noting Florida outperformed much of the country, and he is putting “facts before a preferred narrative” that would say otherwise.

DeSantis previously decried “a narrative created that Florida is about to be capsized by a wave of sick people,” defending his administration’s tactics.

DeSantis’ changing narrative on press coverage was one of the few novelties of a press conference in Tampa that otherwise looked much like those of recent days, with the Governor on the road, flanked by doctors backing his “methodical, data-driven” approach to reopening Florida.

In what are intended to be scripted engagements, the Governor has made news for off-the-cuff quotes, such as a reference to Florida as “God’s waiting room” that various media got entire stories out of.