Saagar Enjeti: 60 Minutes CAUGHT Lying About Ron DeSantis Vaccination Campaign

[Music] all right sagar what's on your radar well there's been a lot of florida man news on rising lately but today we're gonna take a turn away from matt gates to talk about the ultimate florida man that states governor ron desantis now regardless of how you feel about ron desantis i'm gonna say this i think he's probably been one of the most unfairly maligned people in national media since the beginning of the pandemic the truth is is that the media and many people including myself at the time thought his open strategy would be a disaster for kovid and the numbers have simply not borne that out florida is not the best in the nation but it is not the catastrophe that the mainstream media wants it to be and thus they have tried to seize on basically anything to smear desantis and make him appear like the worst governor during the covet 19 pandemic there have been a litany of media malpractices when it comes to florida but possibly the worst one i've seen to date stems from the supposedly gold standard of american journalism over its cbs news 60 minutes 60 minutes is literally one of the most trusted brands in news so when they report something i listen along with millions and on sunday they reported what they proclaimed was a wild pay-to-play scheme in which publix a florida-based grocery chain donated a hundred grand to ron desantis campaign after which he greenlit a lucrative vaccination contract from the state and integrated it into part of its vaccine distribution efforts and i thought wow that's pristi pretty bad positively cuomo-esque almost there's just one problem while it's true publix did give desantis about a hundred grand it turns out desantis had nothing to do with selecting them for vaccine distribution don't take my word for it take jared moskowitz who is the head of florida's division of emergency management and don't worry this isn't some cuomo thing where the guy is like desantis's hand-picked aid he's actually a democrat in the state moskowitz reacted to 60 minutes reporting saying quote 60 minutes i said this before and i'll say it again publix was recommended by florida's emergency management healthy florida as the other pharmacies were not ready to start period full stop no one from the governor's office suggested publix it's just absolute malarkey yikes so the democratic head of florida emergency management says that isn't true well surely he was interviewed and featured by 60 minutes right yeah wrong but actually it gets worse desantis didn't sit for an interview with 60 minutes so they went down to florida to confront him about it at a press conference here's what they played from that segment of on their show on the broadcast let's take a listen we wanted to ask governor desantis about the deal but he declined our request for an interview we caught up with them south of orlando publix as you know donated a hundred thousand dollars to your campaign and then you rewarded them with the exclusive rights to distribute the vaccination so first of all that what you're saying is right how is that not paid that's a fake narrative i met with the county mayor i met with the administrator i met with all the folks at palm beach county and i said here's some of the options we can do more drive-through sites we can give more to hospitals we can do the publix and they said we think that would be the easiest thing for our residents but melissa mckinlay the county commissioner in the glades told us the governor never met with her about the public's deal the criticism is that it's paid a place it's wrong it's wrong it's a fake narrative i just disabused you of the narrative and you don't care about the facts because obviously i laid it out for you in a way that is irrefutable and so it's clearly not isn't there no no no you're wrong you're wrong you're wrong wow okay so desantis just shouted her down he said he met with some people 60 minutes interviewed one person who said it wasn't true and then he got all trumpy and he shut it down it looks bad for him right yeah except that's not what happened 60 minutes eddie edited down desantis's answer to a question in which he actually gave a pretty lengthy explanation of how publix was not first and how they even arrived at the decision and more take a listen to the full unedited response it's long but it's important context so first of all that what you're saying is wrong that's that that's a fake narrative so first of all when we did the the first pharmacies that had it were cvs and walgreens and they had a long-term care mission so they were going to the long-term care facilities they got vaccine in the middle of december they started going to the long-term care facilities the third week of december to do ltc's so that was their mission that was very important and we trusted them to do that as we got into january we wanted to expand the distribution points so yes you had the counties you had some drive-through sites you had hospitals that were doing a lot but we wanted to get it into communities more so we reached out to other retail pharmacies publix walmart obviously cvs and walgreens had to finish that mission and we said we're gonna we're gonna use you as soon as you're done with that for the publix they were the first one to raise their hand say they were ready to go and you know what we did it on a trial basis i had three counties i actually showed up that weekend and talked to seniors across four different publics how was the experience is this good should you think this is the way to go and it was a hundred percent positive so we expanded it and then folks liked it and i can tell you if you look at a place like palm beach county they were kind of struggling at first in terms of the senior numbers i went i met with the county mayor i met with the administrator i met with all the folks at palm beach county and i said here's some of the options we can do more drive-through sites we can give more to hospitals we can do the publics we can do this they calculated that 90 percent of their seniors live within a mile and a half of a publix and they said we think that would be the easiest thing for our residents so we did that and what ended up happening was you had 65 publics in palm beach palm beach is one of the biggest counties one of the most elderly counties we've done almost 75 percent of the seniors in palm beach and the reason is because you have the strong retail footprint so our uh whey has been multifaceted it has worked and we're also now very much expanding cvs and walgreens now that they've completed the long-term care mission that looks pretty different huh then what 60 minutes put together so the story itself is premised on the decision that the democratic head of florida emergency management says is false 60 minutes is caught deceptively editing desantis's response can it get any worse than that get any worse for them and actually miraculously it can the democratic mayor of palm beach florida dave kerner came out with a statement after 60 minutes his report saying outright refuting the premise of their story saying that the story wasn't just based on quote bad information but that it was quote intentionally false that he offered to speak with 60 minutes and they declined and that palm beach themselves are the ones who asked for publix to distribute vaccines mayor kerner's line was this quote we have confronted this pandemic for over a year our residents like all americans are tired and the media is making it worse they are hell-bent on dividing us for cheap views and clicks 60 minutes should be ashamed amen mr mayor amen this episode is a textbook example of the trump effect on our most important media institutions when they hate somebody and are committed to pushing a narrative above everything else all contravailing evidence goes out the window and i guess god bless the internet because at least now we have the ability to get around these people their lies are slowly but surely being exposed for what they are and crystal you don't have to like ron desantis or any of this to know that this is an egregious mishandling of this entire story the way that they edited that clip was completely ridiculous and the fact that two of the leading democrats who were involved in this thing are coming out to back him these people don't like him it's a swing state they probably want to see him defeated come november but it was so egregious and it maligned their own efforts in order to distribute the vaccine that they said screw you you're just clearly pushing something well and here's the other part of the trump effect you are helping ron right now you're helping more popular than ever you're making him a hero among republicans and conservatives nationwide you've now had these democrats come out and basically be like this guy's doing an amazing job congratulations your hitch up just made this man more popular and more likely by the way to be the next president of the united states so great job here now look i want to say i actually wish there was more reporting on these kinds of pay-to-play allegations for example back when andrew cuomo was taking money from nursing home hospital industry which owns certain nursing homes and allowing them to literally write the language that went into his nursing home liability shield i would have liked a big 60 minutes report on that for example i agree and even this yes so desantis's explanation there of look this didn't even come from me this came from the people who were running the respect the people on the ground the mayor who was on the ground who said we looked at the data publix was here we needed this retail footprint is backed up by the people who were involved but still i think it's important to know he shouldn't take the money i'll actually should probably put that in there he probably should just not take the money and not even have the question so governor if you ever watch it just don't take it and so i think you could have done this story i don't think the story's off the table at all i think it's you know the fact that he got 100k in from publix which is a lot of money even in a state like florida and then they end up with this big contract i think that's relevant it looks bad and i do think that that sort of public trust is important but you can't make it so direct when the facts just don't bear you out and so then you just hand him this tremendous talking point this tremendous platform and it's ultimately extraordinarily counterproductive i'm sure there are legitimate lines of inquiry into how ron desantis handled coronavirus i'm sure there are legitimate lines of inquiry including this by the way into how he has done as governor of florida one story that i saw that appears to be accurate is that they messed with some of the death data coming up to election day they changed however they were counting the number of cova deaths heading into election day to kind of suppress the numbers they screwed that story up too i mean but it's so clear what's going on here they saw at cpac he got huge numbers they see in the polls after trump he's the most popular republican and so they see him as a threat from the republican side and they will stretch the truth to try to put on a hit piece on him which ultimately again completely backfired exactly like what they did with trump during his entire presidency no you're right he's actually more popular amongst republicans than ever and he's also not an idiot as in he's doing currently he's trying to give teachers in the state of florida huge bonuses in terms of preschool and public teachers getting the teachers union on his side unlike almost any other republican in the country i did some stuff here actually even before the pandemic pointing out all the different things that he's doing down in florida but pro-environmental in terms of the everglades anti-sugar lobby all kinds of stuff i'm not saying it's perfect but look if you're gonna see somebody who's like a much more competent trump who's not a dumb who's not dumb it looks a lot like ron desantis and yeah i think they recognize that they're actually making him i even saw some smart democrats being like guys stop because you're making him a hero amongst the gop base exactly and he can violate their economic orthodoxy stuff and triangulate towards middle class voters to not appear like a squish he's like you're helping him so congratulations 60 minutes but more importantly look this is still 60 minutes yes i know they screwed up the george w bush thing and all that but when they report something i listen and if they did a real package so to speak on governor cuomo and all governors examining you know pay-to-play schemes and all that it would be totally legitimate but that's not what they're doing i just think it's a completely egregious misstep and they've just been caught with egg on their face their response is well we edit all of our segments and they are completely standing by and leaving out leaving out these people who were intimately involved in the response leaving out their responses that's just journalistic male problems yeah that's that's why he said intentionally lying that is actually what they're doing here all right next on rising our super panel with jennifer holdsworth karp and rachel bovard when rising continues

Channel: The Hill

Views: 1,139,591

Keywords: Rising, Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti, Progressive, Progressive Politics, Democrats, Democratic Party, Republicans, GOP, Republican Party, Ron DeSantis, Florida, Publix, Vaccines, COVID, Coronavirus, Pay To Play

Id: zQDAoa748Jg

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021