Why Does Ron DeSantis Seem So Determined To Make His Pandemic Even Worse For Floridians?

 

Florida Man

On Thursday, Florida reported another 2,541 COVID cases and another 172 deaths (by far the worst in the U.S.). Only 7 full countries had more deaths on Thursday than Florida:

• India- 1,144
• U.S.A.- 942
• Brazil- 818
• Mexico- 601
• Argentina- 390
• Colombia- 178
• Iran- 175

Yesterday, Florida reported another 2,847 new cases-- bringing the state's total to 695,887, third worst after much bigger California and Texas. In fact, Florida now has 32,400 cases per million residents, compared to Texas' 26,243 cases per million and Califoirnia's 20,249, which is below the national average (21,767). Florida has 417,626 active cases, are than any state by far. In short, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, aided by Trump and a Republican-controlled legislature, has turned Florida into a COVID-basket case.

Yesterday DeSantis decided to make his pandemic worse by allowing restaurants at operate full capacity and preventing even the worst hit cities and counties from ordering businesses to close. This while new daily cases are spiking like mad in a dozen counties. Yesterday these were the 10 counties reporting new cases worse than some entire states!

• Miami-Dade- 503
• Broward- 191
• Palm Beach- 157
• Orange- 157
• Hillsborough- 155
• Duval- 120 (where Trump hel;d a super-spreader event Thursday night)
• Alachua- 98
• Polk- 96
• Brevard- 92
• Leon- 88

DeSantis announced that all restaurants in Florida will be allowed to operate with at least 50 percent capacity regardless of local rules. Additionally, the governor says local governments will have to justify any capacity restrictions between 50 and 100 percent. Those would require state approval... The governor says he will not allow local governments to close restaurants. As he has stated this week, he does not believe restaurant closures have made a difference in limiting the spread of COVID-19... [B]ars will be allowed to operate with at least 50 percent capacity, just like restaurants.

Meanwhile, DeSantis' boss, Donald, is reported to have "lost patience" with Dr. Robert Redfield the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Preventio, "as well as with the other public health experts on his coronavirus team because their sober messaging on the future of the pandemic clashes with his rosy assessments.

Trump believes that breakthroughs are not coming swiftly enough, according to people familiar with the President's thinking. Trump's frustrations have caused some to question whether Redfield is on the chopping block, but a Trump adviser said they did not expect the President to make major staffing changes before the election.

The ever-looming threat, Trump's public undermining of the CDC chief and Redfield's tendency to fold to the White House are taking a toll on CDC staff, from top to bottom, employees say. Some have questioned whether their work is making a difference and others have even considered resigning-- and whether the sagging spirits may be hampering pandemic response.

Eight current and former public health officials described for CNN a crushing environment at the agencies charged with the coronavirus response brought on by a President intent on contradicting critical public health messaging and downplaying the threat of the virus, politically motivated pressure from the White House and baseless allegations from political appointees that government scientists are part of a disloyal "deep state."

"The morale is as low as I've ever seen it and we have no confidence in our leadership," a CDC official said. "People are miserable and it's a shame because this pandemic is still flying away and we still need a robust public health response."

Inside the White House, Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci have struggled to compete with the growing influence of Trump's new favorite coronavirus adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no public health or infectious disease expertise whose views are wildly out of step with leading public health experts. Birx has told people around her she is "distressed" with the direction of the task force and is uncertain how much longer she can continue to serve as the coronavirus task force coordinator.

And at the FDA, the agency's top career officials penned a Washington Post op-ed earlier this month reasserting the agency's independence and commitment to science amid political pressure from the White House and "deep state" allegations from the President.

In a nod to the dispirited mood engulfing his agency, Redfield registered his disappointment during a Senate hearing on Wednesday with since-departed top Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Michael Caputo's wild accusations that CDC scientists are part of a "deep state" engaging in "sedition."

Back to Florida for a moment. Matt Dixon reported at Politico that on Friday Bloomberg announced that he’s blanketing Florida airwaves with a $40 million TV ad buy, the first since he pledged to spend $100 million there to defeat Donald. "The massive buy, being made through the Bloomberg-funded Independence USA PAC, comes the same week that nearly 5 million vote-by-mail ballots are being sent to Florida voters in the the start of what effectively is a month-long Election Day in the nation’s largest swing state."

Bloomberg told Dixon that "This fall, the path to the presidency goes through Florida-- and with mail-in ballots going out this week, voters will soon start deciding who gets its 29 electoral votes. That’s why we’re doing everything in our power to tell the story of Donald Trump’s failed presidency and why we need Joe Biden as the next president of the United States."

Florida Republicans can't stop his ads but they are trying to stop him and others for paying the fines of felons so they can vote. Former Orlando Congressman Alan Grayson, one of the first supporters of the idea of re-enfranchising felons who had served their time, told me that "The threat to investigate Bloomberg is the best illustration so far of the psychopathology of the Florida GOP. Florida voted by almost two-to-one in favor of the principle that no one can take away your right to vote, even if you’re a convicted felon. That’s one of those 'INALIENABLE' rights-- a right that you cannot lose-- that the Founders said was 'endowed by the Creator.' But to the Florida GOP, that’s just LOL."





NPR reported yesterday that Ashley Moody, Florida's crackpot, right-wing attorney general, urged on by Matt Gaetz, the furthest right of the Florida congressional delegation, is demanding law enforcement agencies open an investigation into Bloomberg's contribution to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. The Republicans are whining that Bloomberg and other contributing to the Coalition are trying to buy their votes.

Northeast Florida state House candidate Joshua Hicks, endorsed yesterday by President Obama, isn't buying DeSantis' bullshit. "Last I checked, the pandemic is still present," he told me, "we haven't found a cure, people are still getting sick and dying. Yet, today's decision to reopen Florida by Gov. DeSantis was another example of his severe incompetence and his obvious need to please Donald Trump. This decision made by the Governor places lives in danger-- young and old-- and he's playing political games with all of our lives. It's shameful and unbecoming of a Governor. Instead of addressing this virus head on, the Governor has been spreading lies and hiding the facts from the people. He continues to do so and I look forward to holding him fully accountable when I'm elected to the Florida Legislature on November 3rd. Or, he added... as The Atlantic put it Thursday: "In present-day politics, we have one party that consistently seeks advantage in depriving the other party’s adherents of the right to vote."

Bob Lynch is a state House candidate in Miami-Dade, running against one of DeSantis' top allies in the legislature, Daniel Perez. Bob told me yesterday that "You have to remember that Ron DeSantis is doing this AFTER doing nothing to shore up our state’s unemployment, deliberately making it hard to access Federal PUA money, and not rejecting the extra $300 a week in Federal unemployment assistance. So what choice do people have who work in the restaurant industry? Go to work and get sick while bringing the virus into your home or stay home and get no assistance and risk starvation? If we had had a comprehensive state and Federal response since he beginning of the Pandemic we would not be facing this brutal decision.  We should have acted like other modern countries and paid people to stay home. Instead, the Republicans just want to send people to their deaths while providing immunity to business owners that don’t follow whatever messed up version of the CDC guidelines appear from day to day. There is no gray area on the science here. Dining indoors helps spread the virus. The negligence is criminal. The GOP has a very fluid position on states and local rights. They are all in favor of them as long as The will of the people is bent to their vision of what’s 'best'."

Lynch said that "Residents of Florida already overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative in 2018 to restore voting rights for felons. There was no provision for a poll tax to make them pay their fees. Michael Bloomberg, LeBron James, and Michael Jordan have honorably stepped in to assist in this effort as many ex-felons can’t even find out what they will be required to pay to exercise their Constitutional rights. Overturning the will of the people is nothing new in Florida. It happened with Medical Marijuana, it happened with disenfranchising felons, and it will happen again. Hopefully not with the results of the election in November. DeSantis will not provide a critical check on the Trump Regime and Florida Republicans will never provide a check on DeSantis. Our only hope is to vote them all out and elect Democrats who believe in science and the constitution. People will continue to die due to Ron DeSantis’ decisions."

If Rachel Brown wins her state Senate race in Lee County on November 3 you will read the next day that the Democrats, despite the party leadership-- and particularly despite Gary Farmer-- have flipped the chamber from red to blue. This morning Brown told me, referring to DeSantis and his puppets in the legislature, that "they are sacrificing people, school children, for the sake of 'normalcy.' A leader does not pretend everything is ok. A leader deals with an issue head on and is honest with their people. It was absolutely devastating, revolting, apocalyptic... the news. Now that the schools have adapted in these tough times, now this? Now they will have to deal with parents not sending their kids to school with a mask? ... Now it's not safe to go to the grocery store... or go out and vote? That was their plan all along. Discusting."

How Toxic Will DeSantis Be-- Not To Mention Trump-- For Down-Ballot Republican Incumbents In Florida?

 

COVID Ron with COVID Don

Polling shows that Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is the second most hated governor in the U.S. Just 29% of Floridians say he's handled the pandemic well (and that includes the 4% who think he's handled it "very well"). Who's worse? Iowans say Kim Reynolds, who only had 26% willing to say she's done a good job on the pandemic. As of yesterday, there were 685,439 cases in Florida-- 31,914 cases per million residents, the worst in the country outside of Louisiana. Florida has active 453,331 cases (worst in America by far), which means there will be more deaths added to DeSantis' already dismal 13,324.

DeSantis is one lucky-ducky he's not up for reelection in November. Still, he's dragging other Republicans down the drain even while not on the ballot. So yesterday, he took a cue from his lord and master and decided to play the Law & Order card. Reporting for CNN, Gregory Lemos and Allen Kim wrote that DeSantis released a sweeping set of proposals on Monday, probably unconstitutional, that would dramatically crack down on people who attend protests that turn violent or disorderly by threatening them with a mix of felonies and increased jail time.

DeSantis said the proposal, which was introduced at a Monday press conference-- called the Combatting Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act-- would impose stiff criminal penalties for actions such as blocking roadways, disrupting restaurants or toppling monuments.

"You see videos of these innocent people eating dinner and you have these crazed lunatics just screaming at them and intimidating them on a public accommodation," DeSantis said. "You aren't going to do that in state of Florida."

Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, responded to the proposal in a statement, calling it "undemocratic and hostile to Americans' shared values."

"This effort has one goal: silence, criminalize, and penalize Floridians who want to see justice for Black lives lost to racialized violence and brutality at the hands of law enforcement," Kubic said.

Among the proposals is a measure allowing motorists to be waived of liability should they happen to kill or injure a protester with their vehicles while "fleeing for safety from a mob."

The governor said the legislation also enables the state to use RICO liability against anyone who organizes or funds these kinds of "disorderly assemblies," and he cited the handling of Portland's protest as an example of what not to do.

...According to the governor's office, the next legislative session commences in March 2021 but committees will begin meeting later this year to begin the process of crafting the language of the bill and finding sponsors.

I asked some of the candidates running down-ballot how they think DeSantis' cooked up "law & order" scheme is likely to impact their own races. Janelle Christensen, president of the Florida Environmental Caucus, isn't a candidate but she sure was as disturbed by DeSantis' grandstanding as many across the state were. "As Floridians watch their homes flood in the aftermath of Hurricane Sally and are forced to evacuate in the middle of a pandemic," she said last night, "DeSantis ignores their plight. Instead, he moves to pass a law that potentailly violates our First Amendment rights and crushes home rule."

Adam Christensen (no relation-- other than their shared determination to protect the environment of the state they both love), is running for the congressional seat Ted Yoho has been pushed out of-- more on that anon. Adam got right to the point: "It’s like a 2 year old throwing a tantrum. The man wants to make murder legal as long as it’s done with a car.  We simply don’t have time for his foolishness."

Just north of Adam's congressional district, Joshua Hicks is favored to oust a Republican incumbent representing Nassau and part of Duval. Joshua told me that "This 'proposal' is just an election year stunt by the Governor because this team knows Donald Trump is in trouble in Florida. This attempt to silence the voices of Floridians across the state is a pathetic and unconstitutional attempt at a power-grab. Listen, protests should remain peaceful, as we demand justice and an end to systemic racism across the country. But this proposal simply has one goal: to silence and penalize anyone who wants to speak out. That's not okay. As a member of the state legislature, I will oppose this unconstitutional legislation from DAY ONE. My opponent would support it-- because he supports everything the Governor does. We need leaders; not followers. I believe the governor's attempt to silence our voices will actually do the opposite this November: it'll fire up more young voters to go to the polls, helping Democrats win up and down the ballot, and electing Joe Biden our next President."

And down at the southern tip of the state, Bob Lynch, is challenging Trumpist power-monger Daniel Perez in a swingy Miami-Dade district the Florida Democratic Party preferred to leave without a challenger. Today Lynch told me that "On one hand, it will be music to the ears of a sizable percentage of my district, which includes radically right-wing Cubans whose Spanish language propaganda and fear mongering about the socialist/communist,s rivals anything you will hear on Fox News, OANN, or evening QAnon. On the other, Latinos in Miami-Dade County are quickly starting to see through this bullshit. The state is falling apart, unemployment is a disaster, traffic is a mess, and DeSantis left older Floridians to die as a sacrifice to the economy. Castro and Chavez/Maduro were brutal dictators, they share far more in common with Trump, the Saudis, Erdogan, Netanyahu, and President Xi than anyone else.  The brutal scare tactics that Trump Mini-Me And Fisher Price Fascist, Ron DeSantis, is employing are a distraction from his disastrous time in the governor’s mansion. We need to focus on races like mine because taking out a sycophant like my opponent offers Floridians the opportunity to provide a crucial check on the incompetence and corruption of Ron DeSantis. All of the Florida Republicans fall in line with Trump/DeSantis and every less one of them in office means leas dead Floridians."

Professor Cindy Banyai is the progressive Democrat running for open congressional seat in southwest Florida-- and it didn't take much for her to see right through DeSantis' scam. "This is nothing more than an election year ploy from a floundering politician trying desperately to grease his way to favor with Trump. This clearly limits our Constitutional right to free speech and assembly and provides an unnerving amount of power to persecute critics. I'm also concerned about the encroachment on home rule with such state level budget mandates. Between this and Trump's DOJ declaring New York, Seattle, and Portland "anarchist jurisdictions" we should all be worried about the United States becoming a facist dictatorship under martial law. There has never been a more important time to elect countervailing voices to the Florida legislature and US national offices."

GOP Death Cult Convention Celebrates Trump's Leadership-- As U.S. Hurtles Towards 200,000 COVID-Deaths

Tuesday, which was the second day of the #CocaineConvention, was just another normal pandemic day in the USA-- another 1,291 Americans killed by Trump and the Republican Party and another 40,098 new cases. These are the ten worst anti-hero Trumpist governors causing their states the most unnecessary contagion and how many new cases they caused as the GOP Convention kicked off:

• Greg Abbott +6,803-- 21,231 cases per million Texans
• Ron DeSantis +2,673-- 28,192 cases per million Floridians
• Brian Kemp +2,101-- 24,333 cases per million Georgians
• Mike Parson +1,060-- 12,692 cases per million Missourans
• Henry McMaster +937-- 22,042 cases per million South Carolinians
• Doug Ducey +859-- 27,377 cases per million Arizonans
• Bill Lee +813-- 21,293 cases per million Tennesseans
• Tate Reeves +801-- 26,614 cases per million Mississippans
• Kevin Stitt +650-- 13,690 cases per million Sooners
• Kim Reynolds +631-- 18,161 cases per million Iowans

For sake of comparison, the worst hit Europeans country, Spain, has 9,051 cases per million Spaniards. Yesterday, Texas and Florida led the nation in reported new COVID-deaths, respectively 206 and 186. All the western European countries combined didn't have as many deaths yesterday as either Texas or Florida:

• Spain +52
• UK +16
• France +16
• Germany +9
• Netherlands +5
• Italy +4
• Belgium +4
• Portugal +4
• Switzerland +1
• Greece +1

Sweden, Ireland, Austria, Denmark, Norway, and Finland all reported no new deaths on Tuesday.

All these numbers point to a failure of American political leadership-- a failure by Trump, first and foremost-- and a failure by his puppet governors. Harsh? Not at all. Ron DeSantis-- who forced his state's schools to reopen this month in the middle of a deadly, out of control pandemic infected 8,585 school children-- bringing the Florida total to 48,730 cases among children in the worst-run of big states in America. DeSantis ordered that any school not holding in person classes at least 5 days a week would be cut off from state funding. Many Floridians are asking if DeSantis should be tried for murder. Anselm Weber is the Democratic Party nominee for the open Florida state House seat representing HD-76 (Fort Myers Beach, Bonita Springs, Sanibel) He told us that "It is downright diabolical what DeSantis is doing with school reopenings. It doesn't take a genius to realize sending kids and school staff back to work during a pandemic, while not mandating masks, will lead to significant rises in COVID deaths. Israel was handling the virus relatively well before they reopened schools, which then resulted in a massive uptick in cases. Florida has already been the global epicenter for COVID-19 roughly a month ago, and we are in absolutely no standing to reopen schools. Moreover, DeSantis is using this opportunity to cut school funding for schools that wish not to reopen. The GOP is intentionally allowing massive COVID deaths while using this as a pretext to support their ghoulish austerity driven ideology."

Kathy Lewis is looking like a winner in a Tampa Bay area open seat district. She has also noticed what DeSantis is up to. "This is a sad situation for all," she told me yesterday. "There is no correct way that I am aware of to handle the back-to-school dilemma during a pandemic. But Governor DeSantis has put our children's lives and their parents' and teachers' livelihoods at risk by forcing a return to in-person classes. Parents and teachers are looking for well-thought direction from their elected leaders, not just offhand orders to 'figure it out.' For instance, this plan does not consider children who need specialized curricula, such as those with disabilities, who are being left adrift by the state while their teachers and parents struggle to find ways to accommodate them and keep all their students safe. I fully expect we will see a preventable rise in the number of new COVID cases and related deaths in early September-- all a result of this unconscionable decision requiring school districts to trade the safety of their students and teachers for desperately needed funding."

After Night Two of the GOP Lie-Fest, Glenn Kessler and his Washington Post team of fact checkers called it "another tsunami of untruths" and singled out 19 particular big lies.

And right after the second night's festivities Post reporter Touluse Olorunnipa began his analysis by noting that "Faced with a pandemic that has killed more than 175,000 Americans, President Trump used glitzy video and misleading testimonials to spin a tale of heroism and resolve far removed from the grim reality of a country in the throes of an uncontrolled public health crisis. At the Republican National Convention on Monday, Trump was hailed as a bold and lifesaving leader who 'was right' on the novel coronavirus while Democrats, doctors and pundits were wrong from the beginning. One campaign-style video that aired during the convention hailed Trump as the 'one leader' who stood up to the virus while quoting Democratic figures who played down the severity of the virus in its early stages."

It’s a revisionist version of recent history belied by hours of videotape in which the president minimized the threat of the virus for months, falsely predicted that it would “disappear” with warmer weather, promoted several unproven miracle cures, pushed states to reopen before meeting federal government benchmarks, equivocated on mask-wearing, defied social distancing guidelines and repeatedly told Americans that everything was under control.

With the pandemic still ravaging the country just 10 weeks before Election Day, the president is mounting his most ambitious effort yet to change Americans’ minds about his handling of the crisis-- relying on his background in reality television and show business to create an alternative reality that edits out his mistakes and magnifies those of his opponents.

“The RNC is taking a ‘Mission Accomplished’ approach to coronavirus, but the fact [Trump] can’t even hold a regular convention says otherwise,” said Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and a Trump critic who wrote a book titled Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies To Us.

“American life as we know it has been shut down since last March because of his magical and paranoid style of thinking, campaigning and governing,” she said.

While Trump has previously touted his coronavirus response with misleading videos, charts and quotes during news briefings and in campaign ads, the Republican National Convention gives him a platform unique in its scope and reach. Over the course of four nights, the GOP will have 10 hours of prime time coverage, with cable and broadcast networks airing large chunks of the program uninterrupted.

It is perhaps Trump’s last best chance to present an unfiltered affirmative case for a second term in a race where a majority of voters disapprove of his handling of a pandemic that has battered the economy and upended Americans’ lives.





It is likely to be a difficult task.

Government forecasts predict the country’s coronavirus death toll could surpass 200,000 by mid-September; schools continue to struggle with reopening plans as mini-outbreaks across the country shut down classes and frustrate parents; the economy continues to suffer from recession-level unemployment and desperation; a safe and effective vaccine is at least months away; and a flu season looms that public health experts say will only worsen an already precarious situation.

Trump’s positive portrayal this week of his pandemic response is also undermined by the fact that the convention is mostly virtual despite the president’s best efforts to have an in-person gathering. Still, Trump has found ways to flout public health guidance or at least to show a disregard for social distancing. He plans to have a large crowd at the White House to watch his speech Thursday on the South Lawn.

The broadly accepted view that Trump has mishandled the virus is a political liability for the president, as polls show his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, leading nationally and with key voting groups that will determine the outcome. A Washington Post-ABC News poll this month found that nearly two-thirds of registered voters say they are worried that they or their families might contract the coronavirus, and half of Republicans expressed that concern. Many of those respondents plan to vote for Biden.

Much of Monday’s convention program appeared designed to appeal to such concerned voters by convincing them they should not worry.

During one of his appearances in Monday’s program, Trump spoke with a group of front-line workers to thank them for their efforts in combating the virus.

“Well, I’m for the nurses, I’m for the doctors,” Trump said. “We just have to make this China virus go away, and it’s happening.”

The remarks echoed comments Trump has been making since January, in which he has repeatedly claimed the virus was receding or under control as it spread through the country.

“We have it totally under control,” Trump said in January when asked by a CNBC host whether he worried about a pandemic. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

A month later, he praised his administration for “a pretty good job we’ve done,” predicting that the number of confirmed cases in the country would soon decline to zero. The next day he declared “one day-- it’s like a miracle-- it will disappear.”

As cases surged by the thousands in the spring and throughout the summer-- leaving the United States with the most coronavirus deaths in the world-- Trump continued to tout his own handling of the virus and refer to it in the past tense. He regularly made announcements of breakthrough treatments that ultimately did not prove effective, including the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine and ultraviolet rays.

He held rallies and avoided wearing a mask at a time when public health experts said social distancing and face coverings were the country’s best tools to contain the virus.

More recently, Trump has pushed for schools to reopen, claiming falsely that children are essentially immune from catching and spreading the virus. Multiple schools have shut down in-person learning in recent weeks as hundreds of students contracted the virus. The president continues to promote the false idea that case numbers are rising mostly because of more testing. And on Sunday, Trump called an impromptu news conference to announce a “historic breakthrough,” touting a convalescent plasma treatment about which scientists have expressed doubt.

In the video that aired at the convention Monday, Trump was praised for instituting travel restrictions on China and leading an effort to quickly produce personal protective equipment and a vaccine. In the narrator’s telling, only Trump’s perceived opponents and critics were at fault for the country’s predicament.

“From the very beginning, Democrats, the media and the World Health Organization got coronavirus wrong,” the narrator says in the video, which features clips of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio commenting on the novel virus in February and early March.

The video, like others Trump has touted, does not include comments from the president in February, when he publicly dismissed concerns about the virus despite receiving briefings and warnings from top aides and the intelligence community. Trump also praised Chinese President Xi Jinping in January for “transparency” in comments that are now out of step with the president’s tough-on-China stance.

Democrats, who used much of their convention last week to slam Trump as mishandling the pandemic response, said Monday’s program was proof that the president continued to lack a coherent plan to solve the country’s topmost problem.

“The truth is that his failed leadership has needlessly cost over 177,000 Americans their lives, tens of millions of Americans their jobs, and left the United States the hardest hit country by the pandemic in the whole world,” Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement.

Trump has been his chief spokesman in defending his coronavirus response-- with his own public health experts regularly contradicting him publicly-- but this week’s convention provided an opportunity for the president to showcase other voices that support his boasts of handling the crisis flawlessly.

“As a health-care professional, I can tell you without hesitation, Donald Trump’s quick action and leadership saved thousands of lives during covid-19,” said Amy Johnson Ford, a nurse in West Virginia, who spoke of the Trump administration’s move to expand access to telemedicine.

Though public health experts have criticized the president as failing to take the virus seriously at the beginning of the year, Ford said Trump “recognized the threat this virus presented for all Americans early on and made rapid policy changes.”

Other speakers praised Trump for his administration’s efforts to ramp up production of PPE and testing kits, countering criticism he has received for the country’s shortages at the height of the pandemic.

Trump tried to cast criticism of his response as partisan politicking, using a speech in Charlotte to accuse Democrats of locking down states to hurt his electoral prospects.

“These Democrat governors love shutdowns until the election is over because they want to make our numbers look as bad as possible for the economy,” Trump said during a 50-minute speech that included several baseless charges.

Nancy Rosenblum, a professor of ethics in politics and government at Harvard University, said the president’s willingness to embrace conspiracy theories during a pandemic has hampered the country’s ability to mount an effective public health response. It’s a far cry from the traditional response to a crisis, in which Americans band together across political lines, she said.

“It’s a kind of polarized politics that has now reached down into every aspect of our lives, even to life itself,” said Rosenblum, co-author of A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy.

In a second video that aired during the convention, the narrator took on a more bipartisan tone while still praising Trump’s “swift action” to save lives during the pandemic.

“We are America. Despite unpredictable events, we as Americans work together to overcome challenges and write our own stories,” the narrator said.

But with the death toll continuing to mount and just weeks to go before voting begins in several states, Trump’s attempt to rewrite the script will have limited impact on voters, Carpenter said.

“Four nights of Trumptastic reality TV won’t change the dystopian reality we are living with Donald Trump as president,” she said. “People believe their own eyes and ears over Trump.”

The number of deaths is likely to surpass the benchmark Trump set for success earlier this year just ahead of the election.

“If we can hold that down to 100,000... it’s a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100 and 200,000, we all together have done a very good job,” he said during a March 29 news conference.

The president, who is to meet with medical professionals Wednesday to discuss the pandemic, has said he will use his acceptance speech at the convention Thursday to set the record straight on his handling of the crisis.

“So we’ll be talking, because really the job that we’ve done is incredible,” Trump said Monday in Charlotte. “It’s incredible, and none of us get any credit for it, and that’s okay.”

As Ezra Klein wrote yesterday, the convention has been "bizarre, unnerving, and unprecedented. It was banal, predictable, and expected... What is there to say upon hearing Trump described as 'the bodyguard of Western civilization?' It’s not an argument so much as a loyalty oath, an offering cut from the speaker’s dignity and burnt for the pleasure of the Dear Leader himself. But the outrageousness is the point. Protest and you’re triggered-- just another oversensitive lib who can’t take a joke. Ignore it and you’re complicit. To care is to lose. The Republican Party on display Monday night didn’t represent an ideology or a governing agenda. It was a personality cult, and a tired one at that. Republicans, in a break with tradition, refused to write a party platform. They chose, instead, to recycle their 2016 platform. But the delegates agreed that if they had met to fashion an actual agenda, they 'would have undoubtedly unanimously agreed to reassert the Party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his Administration,' and as such, 'the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.'... The problem for Republicans is that the main thing Trump has told them to support is himself. There are no detailed policy proposals, much less a coherent ideology or set of governing principles. And so speech after speech followed the same template: How was America going to stop the coronavirus? By reelecting Donald Trump. How was it going to revive its economy? By reelecting Donald Trump. How was it going to ensure domestic harmony? By reelecting Donald Trump. The contradiction at the heart of the convention, of course, is that Donald Trump is currently president. I’m dead serious. How would reelecting Trump resolve these crises that Trump has proven unable to resolve-- and has, in many cases, worsened-- in office? No one even took a shot at that Rubik’s cube. Instead, the speakers awkwardly talked around the fact of Trump’s incumbency. He was presented, strangely, as both incumbent and challenger; the man who had fixed America’s problems, but also the man needed to fix an America beset by more problems than ever... The core of Trump’s agenda has always been untethering American politics from factual reality, and among Republicans, at least, he’s been startlingly successful. The convention is a loyalty test for Republicans, and a reality check for the rest of us. What are they willing to say? What are we prepared to believe? Do we still have it in us to be surprised?"

Mayhem In Florida, As Trump And DeSantis Drag The Republican Party Down With Them

In their most recent polling, Change Research found that "preference for Democratic leadership on COVID-19 is clear when you see voters’ reactions to the way their governors are handling COVID-19. Republican Governors who have listened to the President on COVID-19 are underwater in the handling of the virus, while majorities approve of the way their governor is handling the outbreak in states governed by Democratic Governors." They were looking across a spectrum of half a dozen battleground states:

You will quickly notice that the two states with the most horrific COVID-collapses, Arizona (23,907 cases per million Arizonans) and Florida (21,901 cases per million Floridians), are the two with Republican governors-- Doug Ducey and Ron DeSantis, both arch-Trumpists-- and that their disapproval rankings are through the roof. The Change Research polling memo pointed out that "As the U.S. nears record hospitalizations, serious concerns about coronavirus reach 77% nationally (+4 over the past two weeks) and remain 71% in the battleground. Within the battleground, serious concerns increased a few points across the Rust Belt and decreased a few points across the Sunbelt, but serious concerns remain highest in Florida (76%)." They also make the point that the failures of GOP governance are threatening Trump's reelection and Republican election prospects down-ballot. They point to Senate races in North Carolina, Michigan and Arizona where Republicans are losing. But the now widely despised Gov. Ron DeSantis is not on the ballot this year and there are no state-wide races in Florida. Democrats running further down-ballot, however, are seeing tremendous energy building for their candidacies to flip red districts blue-- both in congressional and state legislative races.

Progressive Democrat, Adam Christensen, is running for the north-central Florida congressional district-- utterly ignored by the DCCC-- that Ted Yoho is abandoning. "Republicans," he told me yesterday, "are now spending money in places they’ve never had to worry about before. They are scared and we love to see it. They have also been forced to change their messaging. We are watching them eat their own, double down on their Trump support, and mindlessly attack members of the 'squad.' We are also watching them switch their marketing because they are losing support with women across the board, following the Ted Yoho attacks on AOC. Their typical style of politics is not working and they are flailing, trying to find anything that will stick."

This is an example of what passes for GOP campaign literature in Florida

Progressive Democrat, Katherine Norman, is taking on Republican Party chairman Joe Gruters for a pivotal state Senate seat in Sarasota and Charlotte counties. Although the Democratic Party is desperate to win back the state Senate, they are giving Gruters a free pass and ignoring Norman's inspiring grassroots. She forwarded an e-mail to me from Gruters yesterday that pointed out that "Trump’s path to victory this November runs right through Florida... but some polls show that he may be behind Joe Biden in the Sunshine State. On top of this, we’re $18,774 behind on our July fundraising goal with just 48 hours to go."

Norman, who offers a message of compassionate, transparent leadership with a focus on world-class healthcare and a scientific approach, told me that "more and more voters in traditionally red districts are reaching for competent leadership across the aisle. Republicans in Sarasota and Charlotte counties are revolting against Gruters, some leaning towards voting blue for the first time in their lives. As the mismanagement of Florida's coronavirus pandemic continues, we can expect to see increasingly positive polling for Biden in this state... I am deeply saddened for our six million Florida seniors who are locked in their homes, unable to hug or see their grandchildren, unable to fulfill the travel dreams of their retirement because of the complete mismanagement of coronavirus by Florida Republican leaders. Senator Gruters said that he expects the virus to get worse before it gets better. We should not have to accept this nonsense answer from our elected officials. Our citizens deserve leaders that respond to science and that have the basic decency to protect the most vulnerable in our population."

Joshua Hicks is running across the state from Katherine-- a Nassau and Duval House district-- held by gun-fanatic Trumpist Cord Byrd. "Voters are tired of politicians who place supporting one person over the many," he explained last night. "They are tired of people, like my NRA-backed opponent, who are more interested in supporting a twitter President, than their own constituents here at home. The more people I talk to-- Republicans, Independents, and Democrats-- the same message becomes clear: they want leaders in Tallahassee who will look out for them, their issues, and their needs. We don't need 'fake leaders' in Tallahassee who look out only for themselves and their egos. I'm working to turn Northeast Florida blue because we need leaders in the Florida Legislature who will stand up for and support the people, our values and our needs here in the district."

Headlines around Florida are looking more and more like this one from the Herald-Tribune yesterday-- DeSantis’ popularity plummets amid widely-panned coronavirus response-- where political editor Zac Anderson connected DeSantis' sinking poll numbers with how voters are judging his failures in responding to the pandemic crisis and, specifically, his ideologically-motivated and utterly boneheaded refusal to impose statewide public health mandates.

While the pandemic has boosted the reputations of many governors – both Ohio Republican Mike DeWine and Massachusetts Republican Charlie Baker have sky high approval ratings - DeSantis has been accused of standing by and doing little to halt the march of the virus in his state, allowing Florida to become a global hotspot.

As the virus has raged out of control, DeSantis has closed bars but taken few other steps to contain the virus. He repeatedly played down the explosion of new cases, at first attributing it to more testing and then arguing that the big increase in cases isn’t such a big deal because many of those infected are younger and less likely to get seriously ill.

Then, when hospitalizations and deaths also began to spike, he questioned the death numbers. When Florida began notching daily records for new deaths this week he dismissed it as a “lagging indicator” and said he is hopeful because hospitalizations and new cases appear to have stabilized, even as they remain at exceptionally high levels.

DeSantis has rejected a statewide mask mandate and refused to further rollback the reopening effort. His administration is even talking about getting bars and breweries open again, while continuing to urge schools to reopen.

...DeSantis was known as an ardent conservative before he ran for governor, and his coronavirus response mirrors the views of many GOP base voters and President Donald Trump, his political benefactor.

During his time in Congress, DeSantis was a member of the hard right Freedom Caucus who attracted attention for staunchly defending Trump on television.

Trump later endorsed DeSantis in the GOP primary for governor, which sealed his victory. He owes his political fortunes to Trump and has followed the president’s coronavirus playbook of elevating economic concerns above health risks.

But that strategy is collapsing around him, just like it has for Trump, who reversed course and began wearing a mask after deriding them and pulled the plug on holding the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, another sign that Florida’s coronavirus outbreak has reached alarming levels.

Besieged by critics who say he has taken a reckless approach to the virus that is costing lives, DeSantis has shifted his tone and has been less cavalier and more realistic about the dire situation the state is in. He hired a new communications director, which could be a sign of a new approach.

He may be tired of headlines like this one on CNN’s website: “Florida’s governor just can’t seem to get it right on coronavirus.”

“If there’s a face of the botched handling of coronavirus in the United States-- other than President Donald Trump, of course-- it’s that of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis,” wrote CNN editor-at-large Chris Cillizza.

...After ending Florida’s lockdown in May and enjoying relatively low numbers of new cases in May and early June, DeSantis took a victory lap, saying the state’s delayed lockdown was prudent. He slammed the media and public health experts, saying they pushed a false narrative that the state could be swamped with new cases that would overwhelm the health care system.

But now many Florida hospitals have significant numbers of coronavirus cases, straining their capacity. The system hasn’t been overwhelmed yet and Florida still has significantly fewer deaths than other hard-hit states such as New York, but Florida’s total virus cases recently surpassed New York’s caseload and the early predictions made by public health models look more prescient now.

...Just 41% of Florida voters approve of the governor’s job performance in Quinnipiac poll, down from 53% in April. The poll also found that 79% of Floridians believe face masks should be required in public, 62% think it’s unsafe to reopen schools and 61% believe DeSantis reopened the economy too quickly.

Just 37% of Floridians approve of how DeSantis has handled the coronavirus response, compared with 59% who disapprove.

That spells trouble for a politician who will face reelection in two years and is viewed by many as a harboring presidential ambitions. DeSantis’s reputation has taken a big blow, and it could sink further.

The next big test for the governor comes this month when schools are scheduled to reopen in many parts of the state.

Right now that looks like a daunting task rife with risks for students, teachers, parents and the broader community. If it doesn’t go well, many people may blame DeSantis.

And that was a news report! You can probably imagine what the editorials look like. In fact, you don't have to imagine; here's one from the Sun-Sentinel Friday: Help us out, Gov. DeSantis. We’re dying here. The editors are asking DeSantis to get over his ideological proclivities and finally mandate "a sensible and long-overdue statewide mask requirement... With each passing day, COVID-19 continues to careen out of control in Florida. A record 216 deaths were reported Wednesday. That broke the previous record of 191 deaths, reported just Tuesday. 'The numbers are not stabilizing,' Broward County Administrator Bertha Henry told the Sun Sentinel’s Lisa Huriash on Tuesday." [Saturday the Florida COVID death report-- for Friday-- was 256, another record, bringing the total to 6,843. Every family notification should be accompanied by an apology signed by DeSantis.]

Help her out, governor. Help us all out. Far better that you require people to wear masks in public than to continue fostering conditions that will force another shutdown.

Your refusal to impose a mask order-- a requirement now in effect in 32 other states-- is out-of-touch with the mainstream. A new Quinnipiac poll found 79 percent of Floridians support a mask requirement, including 60 percent of Republicans. If that’s not a mandate, what is?

...On Tuesday, police arrested a local Plantation gym owner who thinks a local mask ordinance violates his personal freedoms and doesn’t apply to him. So like a high schooler who sneaks out at night, he let customers huff and puff mask-free. But as Circuit Judge John Kastrenakes made clear Monday in upholding Palm Beach County’s mask ordinance: “We do not have a constitutional right to infect others.”

Some people, like the gym owner, need a governor to take away the car keys. The rest of us need you to do more to prevent the spread of this deadly virus. For almost all of us now know someone who has either gotten sick, or died. And we’re scared.

...A lot has been learned about the coronavirus over the course of these five long months, including this: When it comes to masks, asking nicely doesn’t always work.

The science is clear: Face coverings reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus and can save lives.

Issue a mask mandate, governor. If you can wear one in public, so can we all.

According to a report by a trio of Politico writers yesterday, campaign contributions are flooding into state Democratic parties, including Florida's. This is good and bad. The good part is obvious; the bad part is the state parties are, overwhelming and certainly in Florida, run by hacks with littleton no ability how to spend the money to do any good. Money would be much, much better spent sending it directly to candidates-- especially in Florida, where incompetent leaders Terrie Rizzo and Juan Peñalosa-- dictated to by narrowly-focused state elected leaders like Gary "ruled by his dick" Farmer-- are more adept at sabotaging Democratic candidates than doing them any good. In his own defense, Peñalosa, the state executive director, a failed campaign operative and lobbyist for a GOP firm, said "Every discussion I have with donors focuses on what the party, and only the party, can do-- building volunteer infrastructure, protecting the vote and doing year-round coalition building. Because, if the state party doesn’t have the resources to do that work, our candidates begin the race three feet behind the starting line."

That sounds good but the Florida Democratic Party has been completely inept at accomplishing anything, other than strengthening the Florida Republican Party. And, they are still refusing the give Florida state legislative candidates access to vote files in their districts even though their demands for payment have been met by state Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Commissioner Nikki Fried. Please don't even consider contributing to the sloths at the Florida Democratic Party-- think Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her ilk of self-dealing rooks and scoundrels-- and give directly to the candidates on the front lines, like the men and women you'll find by clicking on the 2020 Florida thermometer above.

I spoke with one of Florida's most admired elected officials, who defined what many people see as exactly what's wrong with a hopelessly mismanaged and incompetent, and nearly useless, state party:

• The complete absence of anything resembling a widely shared agenda.
• Identity-politics division.
• No effort to organize resources.
• Enormous corporate power arrayed against it.

And here I thought that the enormous corporate power had purchased the state party apparatus and was using it against progressives.

Ron DeSantis Thought He Could Cover-Up The Pandemic In Bullshit And Happy Talk-- Instead He killed Nearly 6,000 Floridians

Just after the video above was made by the Washington Post, Duval County authorities told Trump his disease-spreading convention would be too dangerous to hold in Jacksonville and Trump pretended he decided to pull all the live convention events there. Some time early this week, Florida will report enough new COVID cases to shoot ahead of New York in total cases, a grim milestone. Floridians can thank their state's voters-- and non-voters-- for saddling the state with an ideological sociopath as governor and a legislature filled with crackpots competing to see who could climb further up Trump's ass. Josh Dawsey and a team of Washington Post reporters wrote about how Ron DeSantis' decisions made Florida into the worst pandemic hotspot in America. "As Florida became a global epicenter of the coronavirus," they wrote, "Gov. Ron DeSantis held one meeting this month with his top public health official, Scott Rivkees, according to the governor’s schedule. His health department has sidelined scientists, halting briefings last month with disease specialists and telling the experts there was not sufficient personnel from the state to continue participating." Instead, he made all his decisions-- life and death decisions (nearly 6,000 Floridians have died in a rapidly increasing mortality rate)-- based on right-wing ideology and arbitrary Trumpism.

As the virus spread out of control in Florida, decision-making became increasingly shaped by politics and divorced from scientific evidence… The crisis in Florida, these observers say, has revealed the shortcomings of a response built on shifting metrics, influenced by a small group of advisers and tethered at every stage to the Trump administration, which has no unified plan for addressing the national health emergency but has pushed for states to reopen.

DeSantis relies primarily on the advice of his wife, Casey, a former television reporter and host, and his chief of staff, Shane Strum, a former hospital executive, according to Republican political operatives, including a former member of his administration.

“It’s a universe of three-- Shane and Casey,” said one Republican consultant close to DeSantis’s team who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment.

The response-- which DeSantis boasted weeks ago was among the best in the nation-- has quickly sunk Florida into a deadly morass. Nearly 5,800 Floridians have now died of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus-- more deaths than were suffered in combat by Americans in Afghanistan or Iraq after 2001. One out of every 52 Floridians has been infected with the virus. The state’s intensive care units are being pushed to the brink, with some over capacity. Florida’s unemployment system is overwhelmed, and its tourism industry is a shambles.

DeSantis began the year as a popular governor, well-positioned to help his close ally President Trump win this crucial state in November's election. DeSantis is now suffering from sagging approval ratings. Trump is polling behind Democrat Joe Biden in recent polls of Florida voters. And both men, after weeks of pushing for a splashy Republican convention in Jacksonville, succumbed to the reality of the public health risks Thursday when Trump called off the event.

Trump asked DeSantis in a phone call in May whether he would require masks for the convention and whether the virus would be a problem, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. DeSantis said he would not require masks and the virus would not be a major problem in August in Florida.

“You were elected to be the governor of our state and make decisions about what is best for us in Florida,” Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernández said of DeSantis. “If he was more concerned with what the president thought of him, the outcomes are here.”

...Some of Florida’s woes are shared by other states, especially in the Sun Belt: economies powered by tourism and hospitality whose leaders sought reasons to invite people back to their states; skeletal public health systems that could not adequately respond with contact tracing and other interventions; and holiday celebrations that caused residents, particularly young people, to flout guidelines.

But the crisis in Florida has been especially acute, infectious-disease specialists say, because politics have dictated the response at crucial junctures-- never more so than with the state’s reopening, which was cast by the governor as a return to normal rather than as a new and even more precarious phase of the pandemic.

Trump told aides that Florida’s early success gave other states a justification to reopen, according to three administration officials. Meanwhile, DeSantis quickly turned presidential rhetoric into gubernatorial orders, all while rejecting measures, including a statewide mask mandate and an extended stay-at-home order, that helped other states contain their outbreaks.

Officials involved in the local health and emergency response say DeSantis has selectively highlighted favorable metrics, such as a decline in the median age of people who are testing positive, rather than developing more serious mitigation strategies.

“I think we’re on the right course,” he said as cases surpassed 400,000 and he continued to push for schools to open for in-person classes in a few weeks.

Some on the front lines are drawing different conclusions.

“The numbers are up, my man,” said Frank Rollason, the emergency management director in hard-hit Miami-Dade County. “They speak for themselves.”

The governor’s small inner circle stands in contrast to the number of people tapped for his reopening task force in April. The group included more than 100 participants but only five doctors, who were placed on a working group alongside representatives from the ­elder-care industry and farming leaders.

The working group met twice for 2½ hours, said one member, dentist Rudy Liddell, and did not develop written recommendations or provide continued input once the report of the executive committee was released at the end of the month.

The guidelines that emerged from the executive committee closely mirrored the reopening recommendations issued by the White House. There were few specific benchmarks following the first phase of a statewide reopening on May 18-- after about six weeks of sweeping restrictions-- with movement into new phases premised instead on “adequate health care capacity” and the absence of a resurgence of the virus. In early June, DeSantis announced that much of the state could move into the second phase, lifting restrictions on bars and movie theaters, on the same day the state recorded 1,317 new cases, the largest surge in six weeks.

“It was outcome-determinative-- they knew what they wanted to do,” said state Sen. Gary Farmer, the incoming Senate minority leader. “It was a joke... It was, ‘Here’s the plan. Here’s the chance to rubber-stamp it.’”

As the state shifted into reopening, the Republican National Committee announced plans for its convention. The National Basketball Association opted to finish its season in Orlando. Disney World reopened July 11.

Compliance in April with the sweeping stay-at-home order brought the state’s numbers down to a point that reopening looked feasible, said Cindy Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida. The problem, she said, was the speed with which the state moved through the subsequent phases of its economic restart.

“There was hardly enough time for the new infections even to show up,” she said.

The governor’s quest to put the pandemic behind him undermined the very message-- that the virus was still a deadly threat-- that could have made his reopening a success, said J. Glenn Morris, director of the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute.

“One of the areas where we failed in Florida was in convincing people that as things began to open up, that we still had a serious situation, that the virus was still present in the community and that there remained a critical need to maintain the basic practices recommended by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention],” he said.

Critical mitigation strategies remain inadequate, according to lawmakers and experts, owing to years of disinvestment in the state’s public health infrastructure. One estimate, by a researcher at Florida International University, found that the state had slashed public health spending 35 percent between 2009 and 2015.

The health department’s 2017 budget request warned of “insufficient individuals at the local level who have the skills to perform epidemiological analyses” and manage outbreaks.

Contact tracing, which has been central to controlling outbreaks in other settings, has been highly limited in Florida. State Rep. Rene Plasencia, a Republican representing parts of Orange County and Brevard County, said not a single family member or friend sickened by the virus has been contacted by the health department.

With the virus tearing through urban centers, “we’re at a point where I don’t even know how you would do contact tracing anymore,” Plasencia said.

The lesson of the pandemic for Florida, said Charles Lockwood, dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Medicine, was, “Never declare victory until the referee blows the whistle.” When the wave of cases predicted this spring did not initially crash down on the state, Tampa General Hospital and the University of South Florida used the time to order ventilators and stockpile personal protective equipment, Lockwood said.

Meanwhile, steps he suggested to health officials in his county were not acted upon, including a recommendation to use cellphone technology to track at-risk patients and encouragement to stand up a more robust system of contact tracing. In both instances, he said, local health officials indicated they were constrained because these were functions controlled in Tallahassee, the state capital. The health administrator in Hillsborough County, Douglas A. Holt, declined to be interviewed.

Efforts to offer advice on contact tracing at the state level were rebuffed, as well, according to experts involved in the response. Hladish, the infectious-disease researcher, said he and other specialists had tried to raise the subject during one of their calls with department staff but were told contact tracing was handled by a different team.

“We were told that they were too busy to talk,” he said.

Even health department staff were constrained in the nature of the advice they could offer, according to state health officials stationed in counties, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing response. They said conversations with state officials have recently included reminders that they were not authorized to advise school districts about whether to reopen but simply to “provide them with information,” as one official put it.

These officials said calls that once occurred daily with Rivkees, the surgeon general, have been scaled back to three times a week. Rivkees, a pediatrician whose specialty is not epidemiology or disease surveillance, was escorted out of a news conference by the governor’s communications director in April after saying Floridians may have to practice social distancing and wear masks for up to a year, a prediction at odds with statements from DeSantis and Trump.

Some of his top staff have left the department mid-pandemic.

The administrator of the department’s surveillance section left in March for a job at Pfizer. Rebekah Jones, who had been managing the department’s public-facing data portal, was dismissed in May after a dispute over changes to the dashboard, which she said were designed to hide relevant information. State officials, who accused Jones of “insubordination,” said the changes were aimed at increased accuracy. Scott Pritchard, who headed the department’s investigations unit, left last month. He informed his team he was leaving on the day DeSantis announced plans to reopen schools at “full capacity,” according to people familiar with the matter.

DeSantis has left Florida for the White House numerous times during the pandemic.

At an April briefing in the Oval Office, Trump offered to hold the governor’s foam display boards as DeSantis detailed how Florida had corralled the coronavirus better than almost any other state.

“Everyone in the media was saying Florida was going to be like New York or Italy, and that has not happened,” DeSantis said.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Florida now eclipses New York’s caseload by more than 3,300. Florida has at least 168,000 more cases than Italy, a country with about three times the state’s population.

DeSantis joined Trump for a White House event on drug pricing Friday, when the state recorded 12,444 new cases of the virus and 136 deaths.

DeSantis was a little-known congressman in the first half of the Trump administration who made a name for himself with appearances on Fox News denouncing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

He netted the president’s endorsement in the 2018 Republican gubernatorial primary, riding it all the way to the governor’s office.

“What’s the old phrase-- dance with the one who brought you,” said Farmer, the incoming Florida Senate minority leader. “That’s what he’s doing. His political fortune in becoming governor was not just closely tied, but almost exclusively tied, to the Donald Trump train.”

Trump feels bonhomie with DeSantis, likes having him in the Oval Office and regularly speaks with him on the phone, even though many around the president do not trust the governor, people familiar with the matter say. DeSantis also regularly consults with Brad Parscale, the president’s recently deposed campaign manager.

Florida’s initial ability to skirt the worst effects of the virus was a boon for DeSantis and for Trump: The governor’s aggressive efforts to jump-start his economy were right out of Trump’s playbook, perceived at the time as a benefit in the battleground state. Administration officials regularly sent reports and clips of DeSantis bragging about Florida not having cases early in the outbreak, to argue that many states were overreacting and, at times, that seasonal heat could cure the virus.

Now, with the virus spreading uncontrolled in Florida, former health officials think DeSantis has joined the president in seeking to manage expectations about its consequences rather than formulate a plan to bring it under control.

“They keep hoping it’s going to go away by itself,” said Richard Hopkins, an epidemiologist who spent 19 years at the Florida Department of Health. “I don’t know what’s going on-- whether they’re afraid that they will get primaried by someone to their right if they take appropriate public health action.”

Approval of DeSantis’s handling of the pandemic has fallen by double digits since April, when 50 percent of registered voters in Florida backed the governor’s approach. Now, 38 percent of residents approve of his response, while 57 percent disapprove, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.

The return this summer to crisis conditions has felt like whiplash for front-line workers.

In June, employees at the six-hospital Memorial Healthcare System based in Hollywood, Fla., thought they had dodged a wave of coronavirus patients that threatened to overwhelm their hospitals.

Exhaling workers began to dismantle surge areas from auditoriums and classrooms that had been converted into treatment areas. But it was premature. By the end of the month, covid-related hospitalizations had begun to soar, said the system’s chief medical officer, Stanley Marks.

“We converted them back,” Marks said. “By early July, we again were in full emergency mode.”

Darlene Dempsey, a nurse in West Palm Beach and a lifelong Republican, said she could no longer support Trump or DeSantis, both of whom, she added, had chosen to “gaslight nurses” instead of using the time in March and April to ramp up production of medical equipment and develop a testing plan.

“The fairy tales about all being under control are nonsense,” she said. “Our government has failed us.”

Florida's hot new yard sign

Why anyone, at this point, would be taking anything at all Trump or DeSantis says seriously is another matter. But, yes, government has failed Florida. Or, more to the point, Republican governance has failed Florida-- and the rest of the country. In Florida, with no help from the state Democratic Party-- and quite a bit of sabotage-- outside groups have ensured that every single state legislative race would be contested in November, a first for Florida in decades. The state party is still trying to sabotage the effort, refusing access to voter files to recruited candidates, despite access having been paid for by Florida's only statewide Democratic elected official, Nikki Fried, Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Commissioner.

But incoming state Senate minority leader, Gary Farmer, a married man having a barely-hidden affair with a Republican state Senate candidate, Heather Fitzenhagen, has ordered a supine and ineffective party leadership (a yoga teacher and a failed political operative who worked for a shady GOP lobbying firm) to put up a series of roadblocks to keep the new recruits from being able to campaign on an even playing ground. One told me that she felt she was "fighting my own party when I thought I signed up to fight the Republicans... I know this is a very Republican district," she continued, "but I'm spreading the word, making people here aware there even is an alternative and, hopefully turning out voters in this area for Joe Biden... We've explained that to Terrie Rizzo but she nothing seems to penetrate."

Many independent Florida voters who have been voting for Republicans are fed up with Trump and fed up with DeSantis and fed up with Ted Yoho and and fed up with the state legislature. Both Marco Rubio's and Rick Scott's favorability ratings are underwater. This could be a good year for a massive and unprecedented swing towards the Democrats in the Sunshine State. Terrie Rizzo, Juan Peñalosa and Gary Farmer need to get over themselves and stop playing ego-games with the candidates.

One of the top recruits-- likely to be in the legislature next year-- asked for anonymity to speak freely and told me that "It makes absolutely no sense at all. For basically the same price as a low level party staffer, they could have 30 or so of us out there serving as field organizers. There is no logical reason for this to have taken two months to get worked out. Something very odd is going on. One would think that an organization tasked with getting Joe Biden elected would want to give every possible tool to down ballot candidates to make that happen. For whatever reason that is not happening. Many of us candidates put up our own money to get on the ballot. Some of us were even discouraged from running by incumbent Democrats. It starts to make you really wonder. Is winning their actual goal? Or is something else happening behind the scenes?"

Joshua Hicks explained that he got into his state legislative race because he's "working to turn Northeast Florida BLUE. We need a leader in the state Legislature who will stand up for and support the people, our values, and our needs. I believe we need to empower young people, expand healthcare access, protect our environment and tackle climate change, ensure equality for all, and keep our communities safe from gun violence. We don't need someone more interested in supporting a twitter President, than supporting the people of his own district. My opponent, Cord Byrd, has chosen Trump flotillas over Floridians and his Northeast Florida constituents here District 11. Instead of working to end systemic racism, my opponent spends his time organizing boat parades to soothe Donald Trump’s ego. He has lied about his military service. He has refused to fix Florida's broken unemployment crisis, turning his back on Floridians currently unemployed and suffering due to the coronavirus. He has refused to expand healthcare access in Florida. He’s the self-described 'Florida Guns Lawyer' and is bankrolled and supported by the NRA. And apparently he’s okay with having a Q-Anon flag on the same boat he rides on in support of Donald Trump during his boat parades."