Pack the pews but wear your mask, Rick Scott tells the faithful

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U.S. Sen. Rick Scott on Tuesday continued to preach the gospel of reopening churches, with a stopover on Fox News.

“We have a First Amendment. We have the right to express ourselves and our religious beliefs,” the first-term Republican from Naples said. “It doesn’t really matter what the President or Governor or local officials say. We have the right to do this.”

Scott’s media blitz on this issue came after President Donald Trump said that churches were “essential,” a sentiment on which Scott clearly agrees, even as the position he stakes out seemingly puts him at odds with the President’s apparent disdain toward mask-wearing.

While it might not “matter” what public officials say, Scott is no anarchist, and even the Bill of Rights comes with stipulations, he noted.

“Do we have to do it safely? Sure,” Scott said, advocating “wearing a mask” and “social distancing,” two concepts likely not envisioned by the founders of the American Republic.

“We’ve gotta get back into a church, gotta get back to worship,” Scott said. “But government doesn’t need to tell us everything … we’re smart, we know coronavirus is risky.”

While COVID-19 may be risky, it’s less risky for a Republican politician to thunder in seeming advocacy for churchgoers, and for Scott, these talking points have been rehearsed in recent days.

“If you’re close to anybody, you have to wear a mask,” Scott, a former two-term Governor of Florida, said Sunday on CNN. “We have to social distance, we have to wear a mask, we have to open our economy, we have to do it safely. So absolutely, you should be wearing a mask.”

“Quit telling us how to live our lives … We don’t need people to tell us how to live our lives every day,” Scott added in the Sunday spot, striking a libertarian note arguably at odds with his record for eight years as the state’s chief executive.