A.G. Gancarski
Thursday in Destin, Gov. Ron DeSantis made his latest argument against “cruel” mask mandates on mass transit, blasting President Joe Biden for plans to appeal a court decision rescinding those requirements.
“There should be no mandates, period. None,” DeSantis said to cheers.
“I think the airline mandate is to me one of the most cruel,” DeSantis argued, saying that due to “air filtration” systems, “you just don’t have outbreaks on planes.”
“They keep clinging to this forcing people on an airplane to wear it. And the thing is, you’ll have somebody sitting in an aisle seat and they will put the mask down and fake nibble on peanuts for two hours so they don’t have to have a covering, so they can breathe freely, and it’s all a charade,” DeSantis lamented.
“This is COVID theater,” DeSantis said. “But what it is is, they are trying to prolong the misery that these flight attendants have had to deal with.”
DeSantis has been messaging aggressively on this issue since the decision earlier this week in the Middle District of Florida, in which U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ordered an end to federal mask mandates on public transportation.
DeSantis went on to call the appeal “totally outrageous,” an attempt to “reimpose mandates to prolong the misery.”
“Why are they doing this? I think part of the reason is they like to exercise power over the people they govern.”
DeSantis decried such moves to “take decisions out of your hands” as evidence of the “coercive power of the state to take away your freedoms.”
Promoting a new digital ad for his re-election campaign called “Florida leads the way,” DeSantis urged Biden on Twitter Wednesday to “drop any appeal attempts” — advice the President doesn’t seem ready to heed.
DeSantis has suggested the Biden administration’s intransigence on the public transportation mask mandate is motivated by an anti-Florida animus.
“We filed a suit against this right before it was supposed to expire and I think because Florida filed the suit, Biden extended it just because he doesn’t want to give us a win. But by him extending it, it did allow this judge in Middle Florida to be able to rule,” the Governor said Tuesday during a press conference in The Villages.
22 comments
The Pot and the Kettle
April 21, 2022 at 11:10 am
This is laughable coming from our bullying and power-mad governor. Classic pot and kettle situation.
TD
April 21, 2022 at 2:01 pm
Fact is, the last paragraph in the article tells the real story. Once Florida sued, Biden realized that it would be better for him, and his power, to extend the mandate and deny Florida a court win than to ever voluntarily allow the mandate to expire and have to face anger from blue-check whiners in his base. Unfortunately for Biden it backfired and now he is appealing to try to preserve his alleged power to bully people in the future. So who is really the one who is really power-mad?
PeterH
April 21, 2022 at 6:09 pm
The federal mandate was due to expire in early May.
Biden IS NOT REINSTATING THE MASK MANDATE. Biden’s agenda is to slap this incompetent Federal judge with a higher court ruling that clearly states the CDC is the authority on pandemic regulations in Federal spaces.
Tom
April 22, 2022 at 12:16 am
As usual you are ignorant and stupid peter h. It’s not a federal law, Congress enacted no legislation, not signed by Potus. It’s an edict, order.
Pass a law, so all understand. Don’t lecture us you ignoramus. Biden is clueless, he crapped the answer this morning. Thought title 42 question was mask mandate. What a pathetic joke! It’s just a disgrace.
Watch giggles on space, what an idiot.
What a joke, Potus and Vice Potus.
SteveHC
April 22, 2022 at 2:48 am
ACTUALLY – as far as I know, at least – federal law specifically stipulates that the SURGEON GENERAL has the authority to impose these sort of emergency and/or general public health regulations nation-wide, not the CDC.
SteveHC
April 22, 2022 at 2:34 am
Answer: DeSantis. And by miles.
TJC
April 21, 2022 at 11:49 am
Like a typical bully, DeSantis is quick to make a victim out of himself and his followers: the President is “cruel” and anti-Florida. Best of all is his claim that the President is “trying to prolong the misery that these flight attendants have had to deal with,” while failing to point out that the “misery” they’ve had to deal with has been Trump and DeSantis followers violently refusing to wear masks on planes, even at the height of the pandemic.
DeSantis is responsible for the Covid-19 deaths of thousands of Floridians, and he will say anything to distract from that fact. DeSantis is despicable.
PeterH
April 21, 2022 at 6:13 pm
Exactly. Additionally ….according to this article ….DeSantis stated:
“you just don’t have outbreaks on planes.”
Masks are the reason there have been no outbreaks on airplanes.
Tom
April 22, 2022 at 12:20 am
Biden and Fauci killed more, over a million. You are an idiot TJC. America’s Gov, whizzes on your Manchurians daily.
DeSantis saved Florida, Fauci and Biden brought ruin.
HJohnson
April 22, 2022 at 2:37 am
I don’t know what planet YOU’VE been living on – perhaps Planet Russia? At any rate your comment is so far out in bizarro right field it’s hard to even justify the time I’m taking to write this response.
Viktor Medvedchuk
April 29, 2022 at 3:58 pm
Tom is one of our dedicated Russian troll. We, in the FSB, need to train him to be a better Putin puppet.
KAE
April 22, 2022 at 3:57 pm
Give me Governor DeSantis every day over that stumbling bumbling fool the daemonic liberals put in office & having the audacity to call him a president!🤮
Lawrence H Pierce
April 21, 2022 at 11:59 am
Gov DeSantis should stick to FlWhorida issues needing his attention. DOVID is not finished. Maintain marks on airlines which are notorious for dirty air and passengers who may not be vaccinated.
Why is DeSantis in a hurry to take up the mask issue supported by CDC. Because he doesn’t see the big picture
SteveHC
April 22, 2022 at 2:41 am
Actually, it’s because that’s one way he – and most GOP politicians these days – attempt to ensure that his sycophants and general followers actually show up to support his fascist legislative endeavours and vote for him in elections to come. Same strategy that Hitler employed in order to come to power.
Itold Usoh
April 21, 2022 at 12:22 pm
Most of us in Florida are heavily dependent on air travel (just look at the peninsula geography). And frequent travelers have grown to despise this mask mandate, now that we are in the endemic stage of COVID.
Once again, DeSantis shows his political smarts by pouncing on this issue. (I love his “Florida: The Freedom State” slogan.) And Biden’s people, the nanny State restrictionist crowd, are stuck with defending it through who knows how many months of litigation.
Paul
April 21, 2022 at 1:08 pm
So saving people’s lives is cruel, while DeSantis’ targeting of marginalized populations for discrimination has noting to do with cruelty? Mini-Trump should stay in his lane.
SteveHC
April 22, 2022 at 2:54 am
“Mini-Trump” (not that I actually see DeSantis as being “mini” at all) views his “lane” as being the entire highway – just as Trump literally believed himself to be an omnipotent Dictator-President (God help us all…)
Bart
April 21, 2022 at 1:19 pm
The planes have good ventilation systems. Masks ( even the best of them) are way less than 100 percent effective at stopping Covid spread. We now have vaccinations and Paxlivid to help fight off Covid and treat it wrinkly. The time is right to drop mask mandates which psychologically destroy many people.
Bart
April 21, 2022 at 1:19 pm
Quickly not wrinkly.
FLORIDA_RETAIL_SLUT
April 21, 2022 at 1:50 pm
OMG…I fly ALL the time. If anything, it’s the airport TSA lines (even Clear and Pre-Check…yeah that’s you MCO…are you listening?) where you are packed like sardines with families and kids going home from their Disney-Universal-Sea World trip standing in line with you—who knows what they have? More chance of getting sick there than on-board!
Now, can we get TSA to eliminate the take off your shoe rule, unless you’re in Pre-Check where you are not required to? It’s security theater!
Don’t get me started on the budgeteers flying Frontier and Spirit…that’s just gross. Unless I’m flying Southwest, I’m flying in first class anyway. Most of those passengers in that cabin are usually pretty healthy.
Thank goodness, I can escape to the respite of the airline club rooms and/or AMEX Centurion lounge – avoid the masses at the gate!
If these mandates continue – I’ll go back to private jet. It will just cost my customers more money when I bill back the extra expense! I’d rather fly commercial though – more choice of flights and schedules.
I don’t have a problem if you do or don’t want to wear a mask – it’s your choice. Don’t force it on me.
FLORIDA_RETAIL_SLUT
KAE
April 22, 2022 at 4:00 pm
You all seem to have forgotten that the methhead you tried to get elected as governor promised to raise our taxes by $1 billion and use California as a model for Florida! I think God every day for Governor DeSantis!
Beth
April 23, 2022 at 9:15 am
FL is in desperate need of a true leader who can address affordable housing, home owners insurance, and water quality. Instead we have an overgrown adolescent fighting with Mickey Mouse and the federal government and trying to tell people what they can think and say. A whole life of privilege and this is how the loser has chosen to spend his time. Pathetic, useless, wanna be dictator Ronnie needs to be voted out along with his enablers in the FL legislature.
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