Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday warned that leftists, many of whom have experienced a sudden “epiphany” and have lifted remaining coronavirus restrictions in their respective states, will reimpose mandates “if they feel the need” after the midterm elections are over.
“The minute those elections are over, they will impose mandates if they feel the need to do that. They will impose restrictions,” DeSantis said during a roundtable discussion in Doral, Florida, making the remarks as blue state leaders lift the remaining restrictions in their areas, months ahead of the midterm elections.
“And so that will happen. If those types of people are allowed to be put in power — my view on that is, they’ve put Fauci in the witness protection program because he will say, you know, no, you should still wear a mask, and he’s never going to say be normal, go back to normal. So they know that, and they know that that’s not what people want,” DeSantis said, emphasizing that “people want to be able to make decisions for themselves.”
“There’s nothing wrong if on an individual basis you make a certain calculation. That’s fine. We encourage you to do that. But it’s wrong to mandate people and restrict people, and that will happen. I guarantee you, winter of 2022, any of those folks that are there, you are going to see that happen,” he continued.
“The only way to make sure it doesn’t happen is to have nice, big, red wave. So, we’ll see,” he added.
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The governor issued a similar warning last month.
“So when you start to see them kind of reevaluate or say all this, just understand this. The science didn’t change. The medical science didn’t change. The political science changed. They feel the heat,” he said:
“They know that voters have been tired of perpetual lockdown policies. They know that they have basically offered no offramp and they know that they’re fixing to be whooped at the polls, so that’s causing the epiphany,” he added.
Hawaii’s Democrat Gov. David Ige already essentially admitted this, noting that he will reinstitute the state’s mask policy — which is set to be lifted March 25 — in the future “if COVID case numbers surge.”