Exclusive – Florida Gov. DeSantis: CDC ‘Absolutely’ Driven by Politics

JACKSONVILLE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) believes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is “absolutely” driven by politics, causing the American people to lose faith in the federal agency, he told Breitbart News during an exclusive interview on Tuesday.

Speaking to Breitbart News after signing a bill to protect girls’ and women’s athletics, DeSantis said the CDC is “absolutely” driven by politics, providing one example that, he said, made that view “crystal clear.”

“You saw a lot of examples, but the one that was the most crystal clear to me was when we were getting ready to do vaccine distribution. They have their ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] panel. They wrote a report in November, I was probably the only governor who read it,” he said, explaining that the report was “mostly about social justice and inequity and all these left-wing buzz terms.”

“And they actually recommended, initially, that younger essential workers get vaccinated before elderly, and their own analysis said that would lead to significantly more deaths,” he said, explaining that they justified it based on “equity concerns.”

“So that’s ideology going in. We rejected the CDC guidelines on that. We put seniors first. We said if you’re 65 and over, we’re going to get it to you and we lowered the age from there,” he said. “But that is an example of, your own analysis is admitting it’s going to have a death toll. I mean, man you gotta be —  your goal should be to save lives.”

DeSantis went on to say that the CDC has been “very contradictory” and criticized the federal agencies handling of schools, calling it “absolutely disgraceful.”

“Schools should have been open from the beginning of this past school year. Clearly, by the time Biden’s administration comes in, the data was abundantly clear, and instead what they do is they just ignore the data that counteracts the ideology, and so I do think it’s being driven more by narrative and ideology at this point, certainly with schools,” he said.

“Summer camps–  they want these kids muzzled outdoors, playing sports in summer camps. It’s absolutely insane. I think there’s probably no agency in the federal government over the last 15 months that has seen the estimation by the public decline as significantly as the CDC,” he said.

“It’s unfortunate,” he continued, adding that, at this point, the American people have “tuned the CDC out.”