Ron DeSantis’s narrative whiplash
On Sunday,
60 Minutes, on CBS, aired a segment examining “how the wealthy cut the line during Florida’s frenzied vaccine rollout,” and the “corruption allegations clouding” the effort. At one point, reporter Sharyn Alfonsi brought up a vaccination partnership between the state and Publix, a chain of grocery stores that, in Palm Beach County, at least, has steered doses away from public-health bodies, disadvantaging poorer residents of color, in particular. Asking why Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, chose to partner with Publix, Alfonsi noted that in the weeks before the deal was announced, the company gave a hundred thousand dollars to DeSantis’s political action committee, and that figures connected to the company have donated to the PAC in the past. DeSantis declined to be interviewed, but Alfonsi was able to confront him at a press availability near Orlando. “How is that not pay to play?” she asked. DeSantis replied that she was pushing “a fake narrative”; after some back and forth, he told her, “you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” and pivoted to a different reporter.