‘Donald Trump tells the truth, finally,” exclaimed one of the former president’s most unlikely supporters, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. The disgraced author of New York’s draconian Covid-mitigation policies, who resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment and corruption investigations that were bearing fruit, has to take the defenders he can find. Trump has become one in the course of his frenetic efforts to bludgeon Ron DeSantis with any weapon at hand. This arsenal includes unfavorably contrasting the Florida governor’s approach to Covid with Cuomo’s and, of course, Trump’s preferences. Anyone who wishes to ensure that America’s mistakes during the pandemic never happen again should emphatically reject Trump’s revisionism.
Trump claims that Florida is “Third Worst in the Nation for COVID-19 Deaths (losing 86,294 People)” and “Third Worst for Total Number of Cases, at 7,516,906.” So, “why do they say that DeSanctus [sic] did a good job?” the former president asked. In response to this rhetorical question, the mainstream press’s hyperactive fact-checking apparatus has gone quiet, a silence rendered more conspicuous by the sheer audacity of Trump’s conclusions.
That Florida had more cases and deaths than New York tells us little, given that the former has 2 million more residents than the latter. What’s more relevant: Florida has a larger elderly population, and so its age-adjusted mortality rate from Covid was 8 percent lower than even the median state, to say nothing of New York, which is surpassed in this gruesome metric only by New Jersey and the two Dakotas. Florida’s better policies surely played a role in its better outcome. As journalistic outlets revealed and New York State attorney general Letitia James’s office confirmed, the Cuomo administration’s policy of warehousing Covid-exposed seniors in long-term-care facilities contributed to excess deaths among the elderly — a fact Cuomo’s administration tried to cover up. Florida’s government resisted public pressure to adopt New York’s model even as other states succumbed to that pressure (to tragic results).
Trump also attacks DeSantis’s Covid record by claiming that Florida had “radical lockdowns” that the former president opposed. If that doesn’t comport with your recollection of the pandemic, don’t worry about your memory. DeSantis reluctantly consented to a partial shutdown of brick-and-mortar establishments and beaches on March 20, 2020. That was, according to DeSantis’s critics, a belated response to Donald Trump’s March 16 federal guidelines urging Americans “to engage in schooling from home when possible, avoid gathering in groups of more than ten people, avoid discretionary travel and avoid eating and drinking in bars, restaurants, and public food courts.” Florida’s restrictions lasted for all of 29 days before DeSantis gave the go-ahead to begin reopening public and private facilities. That was a bold move at the time — DeSantis didn’t wait for public opinion or the Trump White House to catch up with his instincts.
Just days after DeSantis green-lit the reopening of outdoor venues, Donald Trump went after Georgia governor Brian Kemp for similar policies. “I disagree strongly with his decision to open certain facilities,” Trump told reporters.
Both DeSantis and Kemp were accused in the press of laying the groundwork for an orgy of death, but the media derangement never matched reality. The governors showed wisdom in ignoring the professional hysterics who populate public life.
Trump has been all over the map on his administration’s own Covid policies, at times endorsing them, at times distancing himself from them (even when he was president and everyone designing and implementing the policies was working for him). He’s now also turned on what was one of the most significant developments of his presidency — encouraging the development and distribution of effective Covid vaccines in a radically short period.
“So much for Ron and anti-vax,” the president said of a post that attacked DeSantis for, of all things, clearing the line so an elderly World War II veteran could receive an early vaccination. This isn’t a spontaneous attack. It was forecast as early as January. One “Trump ally” told the Times that they were stockpiling “news B-roll of DeSantis presiding over vaccinations of elderly people,” which Trump’s allies believe will turn off Republican voters. But DeSantis was in line with Trump administration policies.
“The ultimate goal here,” said Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar, “is to make getting a Covid-19 vaccine as convenient as getting a flu shot.” He was talking of a policy expediting vaccinations among seniors by administering them in long-term-care facilities — a program Trump himself touted in a speech. “The plan we put forward prioritizes the elderly and patients with underlying conditions,” Trump said of the “miracle” that was his vaccine-promotion policies. “We urge the governors to put America’s seniors first.” In addition, Trump mobilized the U.S. military to deliver as many shots into as many arms as possible.
In the intervening years, Republicans have grown more suspicious of the promotion of Covid vaccines, partly because they became entangled with overzealous vaccination mandates that made even less sense as it became clear that the vaccines did not prevent transmission. But by November 2021, the DeSantis administration sought and signed legislation prohibiting the imposition of vaccination mandates on private businesses without requisite opt-outs, and he has proposed a permanent ban on such extraordinary measures.
DeSantis has called all this historical revisionism precisely what it is: “bizarre.” The governor has proposed several rebuttals to Trump’s reconceptualization of reality, but the most effective is how Trump’s behavior runs counter to his attacks. “Hell, his whole family moved to Florida under my governorship,” DeSantis exclaimed. Of course, so did hundreds of thousands of other Americans.
It’s understandable that Trump would seek to massage his record on the pandemic. With enough table-pounding, maybe voters will forget the degree to which he outsourced the presidency to admittedly manipulative social engineers like Dr. Anthony Fauci, his effusive praise for the Chinese Communist Party, and his chaotic conduct throughout the pandemic.
Trump appears to wish that he had governed differently during the Covid crisis and erred on the side of liberty. If he had, his record would look a lot more like that of Ron DeSantis.