The Perfect Storm Battering Ron DeSantis

“We are in a crisis and this governor is raising money off of anti-Fauci merch and going to other states to do fundraisers,” Florida Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Fried says of Ron DeSantis.

Yes, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are reaching all-time highs in Florida, and its leader is hawking koozies and pretending everything’s hunky dory.

“I don’t really understand what’s going on every single time that he opens his mouth,” Fried, who’s running against DeSantis, tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “I just am more flabbergasted about what comes out of it. You know, yesterday he was blaming immigrants for our COVID cases and for our hospitalizations… and yelling at the president.”

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Don’t expect DeSantis to accept any blame for the situation, Fried tells Molly—instead, he’ll be defunding school districts that try to enact a mask mandate to keep their students safe.

Then there’s the lingering fallout over the deadly Surfside condo collapse and fears over other buildings that could be crumbling, plus a devastating red tide that’s hitting the state’s economy just as DeSantis is arguing with the cruise industry about vaccines.

The governor went to the areas hit by the red tide and announced that it wasn’t that bad. Fried lays out why it is that bad for the local economy.

“So dead fish are not good for tourism is what you’re saying,” Molly quips.

Also in the episode, Ian Dunt—editor-at-large of Politics.co.uk, host of the Oh God, What Now? podcast, author of How to Be a Liberal—talks about Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 fiasco in Britain, where he hosted a reopening celebration just as the Delta variant spiked. Dunt goes deep on the Tory government’s creeping authoritarianism and the U.K.’s new Fox News-on-the-cheap, GB News.

Finally, Molly and co-host Jesse Cannon are joined by veteran New York Democratic guru Hank Sheinkopf, who explains why there’ll be even more chaos if Gov. Andrew Cuomo is removed from office over his harassment allegations—and whether AG Tish James can succeed him as governor.

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