100% unconstitutional

TRANSCRIPT:

REPORTER: Governor, the president had a lot to say yesterday, and he didn’t say your name, but obviously was referring to you, what you have to say to him that when it came to about the mask mandates?

RON DESANTIS, GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA: Well I would just say generally when you’re taking action that’s unconstitutional, that threatens the jobs of the people in my state, many, many thousands of jobs, I’m standing for them. We’re going to protect their jobs against federal overreach. This is a guy who criticizes the state of Florida for protecting parents’ rights. He says school boards should be able to eliminate parents’ rights and force five-year-old kids to wear masks all day. That’s what he thinks is appropriate government. Yet, here he comes from Washington, D.C. instituting an unprecedented mandate, which even his own people have acknowledged in the past is not constitutional. That’s not leadership.

And I think the problem I have with Joe Biden, more than anything, this guy doesn’t take responsibility for anything. He’s always trying to blame other people, blame other states. This is a guy that promised when he ran for president, that he would shut down the virus. If you look now there’s 300% more cases in this country today than a year ago when we had no vaccines at all. So his policies are not working.

He’s doubling down on things that are going to be very destructive for the livelihoods of many, many Americans, and obviously going to be destructive to our constitutional system and the rule of law. And so these are times when you believe in that constitution, you got to stand up. And obviously the substantive issues’ important because there are places that are going to toss aside people who’ve worked, they’ve worked this whole time throughout COVID, now all of a sudden they should be tossed aside? They were working when nobody had vaccine, you don’t know their history, you don’t know why they’re making decisions that they’re making. Many of these people have already recovered and they have immunity. The idea that somehow you have somebody that gets a Johnson and Johnson, they can work, but someone that’s got natural immunity somehow can’t?

That natural immunity is strong. So it’s not based on science. And you can say, he’s saying, he’s losing patience with people. You know, at the end of the day, we don’t live with a one person rule in this country. We live in a constitutional system, which people’s rights are respected, but particularly in this juncture, their livelihoods and their jobs have to be protected. I mean, just think about, you know, what this mandate would do. It’s going to drive people out of work, out of hospitals, out of all this stuff where you have a need for people. So it’s totally counterproductive, and I think it will ultimately lose in court. But before that there needs to be action taken to protect the people of our state and hopefully the entire United States. Nobody should lose their job based on this decision.