MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough called on President Donald Trump to urge one of his strongest supporters to shut down Florida to halt the spread of the coronavirus.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is resisting calls to order a statewide lockdown during the outbreak, and the “Morning Joe” host said the president must exercise his leadership to save his own supporters from the deadly virus.
“If Ron DeSantis, Mr. President, is too much of a coward to shut down the state of Florida on his own, you need to give him a call today and tell him to shut down the state of Florida,” Scarborough said, “or there are going to be a lot of dead senior citizens that are going to have to be buried over the next couple months because of this virus. That’s science, that’s not politics. It’s Republicans, as well as Democrats, that are going to die. People in the greatest generation, a lot of them born in World War II or born during the Great Depression and grew up and were around during World War II and help build the American century.”
“Those are the people who are being betrayed and abandoned right now because the governor of the state of Florida won’t shut down beaches and sandbars,” he added, “and I tell you, last weekend, I saw pictures from last weekend the sandbars were still packed. By the way, Mr. President, a lot of Trump flags on the boats at the sandbars with people acting like total jackasses infecting each other, taking those viruses home and infecting their grandparents and sending them to hospitals.”
Scarborough begged the president to call DeSantis and ask him to issue a lockdown order.
“The recklessness is just unbelievable,” he said. “Please call Ron DeSantis since he doesn’t have a backbone, apparently, since he still can’t see everything that’s been happening over the past couple of months and still won’t do what is required to save senior citizens from this hellish end to their life, dying alone. Give him a call today, Mr. President, and tell him to do the right thing and shut down Florida. This impacts you too. If you don’t want to do it for the right reason, do it for the political reason.”