A.G. Gancarski
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott on Thursday addressed the nation’s mounting job losses Thursday as the latest unemployment numbers dropped.
“You feel so sorry,” Scott, a first-term Republican from Naples, said on Fox and Friends. “It’s a horrible life for these families. We’ve got to do everything we can to help them.”
“Every family that I talk to says we’ll figure out how to stay safe, just get us our jobs back,” Scott added, before the interview quickly pivoted to denunciations of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The United States saw 2.4 million new unemployment claims (223,000 in Florida) last week, bringing the total since March to 39 million.
For Scott, who was Governor through 2018, the unemployment issue has been something of a sticky wicket in 2020, with current Gov. Ron DeSantis spending much of the spring lambasting the CONNECT website he inherited from the Scott administration.
DeSantis has consistently messaged around improvements to a system he has described as a “jalopy in the Daytona 500” that was “designed to fail.”
“The system was a disaster,” DeSantis said, “so bad it basically needed to be redesigned.”
Scott and DeSantis have not sniped at each other on live microphones, but their spokespeople have filled the void at times.
Scott was not asked about the CONNECT system on Thursday’s Fox and Friends. Nor was he put in the position of reprising previous comments about the unemployed making what he called “the rational and reasonable decision to delay going back to work, hampering our economic recovery.”
However, the upstaging that happened on Fox and Friends may have been worse than talking unemployment failures.
What was already a short segment was truncated further with an extended clip of DeSantis’ Wednesday comments lambasting the national media for unfavorable coverage of his handling of the COVID-19 crisis.
Alongside U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, the Governor laid into the press with some lines President Donald Trump would have appreciated.
“We’ve succeeded,” DeSantis said, “and I think that people just don’t want to recognize it because it challenges their narrative, challenges their perception.”
The Governor’s comments were lauded almost universally by Republicans, but a tight-lipped Scott could not bring himself to mention the Governor by name, much less praise him.
“The media wants to attack Republicans and support Democrats, that’s what they do,” Scott said, lauding “smart” Floridians for flattening the curve, with not a single syllable in support of his successor.
3 comments
Frankie M.
May 21, 2020 at 1:27 pm
If Fauci is a creation of Trump then so is Ronnie…
Pete from Minneapolis, MN
Vic, what do you think about Trump accusing Dr. Fauci of trying to “play all sides?”
I think Dr. Fauci has become a character in this drama too big to cancel. He’s on FOX and he’s on CNN. He’s not right or left, he’s truth. Dr. Fauci is what Americans want the media to be: without bias. It amuses me Trump is Dr. Fauci’s creator. None of us knew who he was until Trump created the Dr. Fauci character to use his credibility to sell the president’s agenda, but then Dr. Fauci began telling uncomfortable truths. There’s no turning him off now.
Frankie M.
May 21, 2020 at 1:31 pm
Rick Scott has never been poor (if he has he’s forgotten…until election season rolls around) he has never had the joy of a welfare xmas.
Glenn Reihing
May 22, 2020 at 9:26 am
What does he know about being unemployed??
When he was forced out of Columbia for being part of defrauding Medicare, he walked away with a $300 million in stock, $5.1 million severance, and a five-year contract that paid $950k per year.
I don’t know of too many people that get that kind of package.
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