Get the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here.
The Hill’s Joe Concha reacted on “Fox & Friends” on Thursday to Florida Gov. Ron Desantis blasting the media for its hostile coverage of his handling of the coronavirus in his state.
Concha said he can’t understand why DeSantis doesn’t get more positive coverage given Florida’s handling of the pandemic.
“I have no idea, except to say there’s an ‘R’ next to his name,” he said.
Speaking to reporters alongside Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday, DeSantis touted Florida’s improving data, citing Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House coronavirus task force, who called it the “absolutely best data” among every state in the country.
“So any insinuation otherwise is just typical, partisan narrative trying to be spun and part of the reason is that you’ve got a lot of people in your profession who waxed poetically for weeks and weeks about how Florida was going to be just like New York,” DeSantis scolded the reporters. “‘Wait two weeks, Florida is going to be next. Just like Italy, wait two weeks.’ Well hell, we’re eight weeks away from that and it hasn’t happened!”
CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE
He went on to say that Florida “succeeded and I think that people just don’t want to recognize it because it challenges their narrative, it challenges their assumption, so they’ve got to try and find a boogeyman.”
As of Thursday morning, Florida reported 47,471 coronavirus cases and 2,096 deaths compared to New York which reported 354,370 COVID-19 cases and 28,636 deaths, according to data compiled by Fox News.
On Thursday, Concha noted the dramatic difference in the number of deaths in Florida compared to New York despite the fact that Florida has “four major cities,” including, Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville.
He went on to say that, “Florida along with Georgia, along with Texas, along with Colorado, should be seen as road maps on how to strike this delicate balance between health concerns and reopening the economy with 36 million people filing for unemployment just over the last six weeks.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Concha then noted that “the national outlets swarmed to Jacksonville, you may recall, when that mayor opened up that city’s beaches, saying that ‘Oh my God, look at all these people out here. This is obviously going to be a spike in cases, spikes in deaths.’”
“Do you know how many deaths Jacksonville, Duval County, has had since cases started being recorded in March? 36. That’s all,” Concha said, going on to call out CNN anchor Chris Cuomo for showing “complete hypocrisy” in his coverage of the virus.
He said Cuomo hosts his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, on a nightly basis yet declines to ask about the nursing home order that has been a “death sentence” for many residents of the state.
“We prize rhetoric far too much over results and Andrew Cuomo is exhibit A,” he concluded.
Fox News Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
