Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pledged Wednesday that no new COVID-19 restrictions were coming to his state as some parts of the country gear up for new flu season protocols.
Appearing on Newsmax's "Eric Bolling The Balance," DeSantis defended his record of fighting exessive lockdowns during the pandemic and assured that Florida would stay free of them as long as he is governor.
"We have implemented in Florida permanent protections against all those mandates," DeSantis stated. "They can't force you to wear a mask. They can't make your kid wear a mask in school. They can't force you to take these shots. They can't do any of the things that we saw that were offensive."
He was referring to a series of orders and legislation implemented by him and the Florida Legislature, including one from May 2021 that prevents local officials from instituting public health restrictions.
"What people told me when we enacted those protections was, 'Oh, that's not going to happen. Those days are over.' But it is happening again," DeSantis emphasized, pointing to several school districts that have reinstituted mask mandates.
DeSantis, who is also running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, said that if he wins, his Cabinet will bring a "reckoning" to the federal health agencies that perpetuated the extended lockdowns.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration are "responsible for really bad policies and lying to the American people about so many different things," the governor insisted.
DeSantis is in second place behind former President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination, trailing Trump by over 37 percentage points, or 53% to 15.6%, according to a FiveThirtyEight average of polls.
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