Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has frequently pointed to how he handled the COVID pandemic in Florida while criticizing former President Donald Trump's handling of the matter, this week continued to seek support from vaccine skeptics with a "Medical Freedom" town hall in New Hampshire.
The event, held Wednesday in Manchester, N.H., featured DeSantis along with Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, with the governor insisting that federal public health agencies had been spreading "nonsense" during the pandemic and saying that they need to be overhauled, reports The New York Times.
DeSantis, who like other GOP candidates for president, is trailing far behind Trump in the national polls, has often said his methods during the pandemic in Florida, which included reopening businesses and schools early and banning local governments and companies from enacting vaccine and mask mandates, should be used nationwide.
During Wednesday's event, the governor said the vaccines were rolled out without going through proper clinical studies and insisted that federal officials lied or were wrong about the risks or benefits of being vaccinated.
"The federal government muffed this in many different ways, and we need a reckoning," he said at the town hall, sponsored by the super PAC backing his campaign.
DeSantis, however, has not been successful with his criticism of the Trump administration's COVID policies. Many voters told The New York Times in interviews in the early nominating states that even while they disagree with mandates, vaccines, and more, they don't blame Trump for his response.
"I'm always inclined to cut President Trump some slack on the epidemic because he was listening to people who supposedly knew what they were talking about," said Richard Merkt, 74, who was at Wednesday's town hall and said he plans to vote for DeSantis in New Hampshire's primary.
DeSantis, meanwhile, has continued his COVID policies while running for the White House including in September, when he and Ladapo said people under the age of 65 in Florida should not get the latest COVID vaccine.
The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended the shot, which is formulated to prevent the latest COVID variants, for most Americans six months and older.
Ladapo, who holds degrees from Harvard University, on Wednesday praised DeSantis' response to the pandemic, commenting that "to read the data, to reach a conclusion, to know that conclusion is right, and all of these Harvard Ph.D.s and M.D.s are wrong? That takes courage."
DeSantis, meanwhile, says he is the only Republican who can attract general election voters who remain angry about the government's response to the pandemic.
He has further said that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist, will lure voters away from Trump if he is the GOP nominee.
"RFK Jr. will be a vessel for anti-lockdown and anti-[Anthony] Fauci voters, if Trump is the nominee," DeSantis said in October. "If I'm the nominee, they all go to me."
DeSantis' team is also dismissing criticism of his COVID policies as being from a "tyrannical medical establishment."
"His actions have exposed the 'experts' for the political actors that the country now knows them to be — and that's why they continue to attack him with failed science and fake narratives," Bryan Griffin, press secretary for the DeSantis campaign commented in a statement, adding that the governor "prioritized the truth" on COVID and would "do the same for our nation as president."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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