Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday called President Joe Biden’s national vaccine mandate unconstitutional and vowed that his administration would battle a policy that will cost jobs and makes villains of people without knowing their medical history.
“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,” DeSantis said in response to a reporter’s question, as he attended a veterans appreciation event in Ponte Vedra Beach.
“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 5-year-old kids to wear masks all day. That’s what he thinks is appropriate government,” DeSantis continued.
“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.”
Biden announced the mandate in a speech Thursday afternoon. During his comments, Biden did not refer to DeSantis by name, but was clearly referring to the Florida Republican when he talked about governors fighting with local school boards about mask mandates for students.
Biden, who demanded that up to 100 million Americans get vaccinated, whether they want to or not, or face losing their jobs, accused DeSantis of “bullying” local officials. He then added, “If these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way.”
On Friday, DeSantis pushed back against the authoritarian in the White House.
“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,” the governor said.
“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 percent more cases in this country today than a year ago when we had no vaccines at all. So his policies are not working.”
DeSantis then said Biden was “doubling down” on bad ideas that “are going to be very destructive for the livelihoods of many, many Americans, and obviously going to be disruptive to our constitutional system and the rule of law.”
“These are times when you believe in that Constitution. You got to stand up,” he added. “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 [a] vaccine. You don’t know their history. You don’t know why they’re making decisions that they’re making.”
DeSantis then honed in on a point that was utterly absent from Biden’s speech Thursday: natural immunity.
“Many of these people have already recovered and they have immunity. The idea that somehow you have somebody that gets a Johnson & Johnson [vaccine], they can work, but someone that’s got natural immunity somehow can’t?” said DeSantis. “That natural immunity is strong. So it’s [the vaccine mandate] not based on science.”
The governor then recalled one of Biden’s more controversial lines in a highly contentious speech, when he said to unvaccinated people, “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.”
“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,” DeSantis said.
“Just think about 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,” the governor concluded, “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.”
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I purposely wi not live in a dictatorship like we have very long over here. Something soon has to be done to rid this country of the socialist communist drmocreeps!