OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The reelection campaign of Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is raising money by once again trolling President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
A new ad supporting his campaign features a pair of flip-flops and notes that they are “coming to a beach near you.”
The Daily Wire notes:
Wall Street Journal national political reporter John McCormick tweeted a video of the ad, which first aired on One America News early Monday morning. “Coming to a beach near you,” the ad begins. It then shows a number of black-and-white clips of Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, making seemingly contradictory statements about the policies he recommended to deal with the spread of COVID-19.
“People should not be walking around with masks,” Fauci says in one clip, before saying that “masks work” in another.
In the next pair of clips, Fauci says that fully-vaccinated individuals do not need to wear masks but then says that people should still wear masks even if they’re fully vaccinated.
The ad also shows Fauci talking on the issue of keeping children in school, arguing at one point that “you really [had] better be very careful before you bring the children back,” then later arguing that “the default position should be to try as best as possible to keep the children in school”; as well as on the issue of social distancing, saying in one clip early on in the pandemic that “there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis,” but then in another clip calling for “a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see.”
“Dr. Fauci, he flips, he flops,” the ad notes as the camera pans away from a TV screen, adding, “but he can’t stop freedom in Florida.”
At that, the ad flashes a pair of red DeSantis-branded flip flops before zooming out and panning away to reveal a message scrawled in the sand reading: “FAUCI CAN POUND SAND.” The ad then shows the flip-flops along with a link to the GOP governor’s campaign website so supporters can pre-order a pair.
Dr. Fauci is the central character in this new @GovRonDeSantis 60-second campaign ad that first aired at 0649 today on OAN. pic.twitter.com/9rt05E3Unx
— John McCormick (@McCormickJohn) January 25, 2022
DeSantis has ripped Fauci on several occasions, including during a recent interview on Fox News where he took the country’s top immunologist to task along with the Biden administration in general for focusing heavily on more mask-wearing and COVID-19 vaccines as the only ways out of the pandemic.
“Most of these other governors and the people like Fauci and the federal leadership, they basically say, ‘Get a shot, wear a mask,’ and they never talk about treatment. And we’ve really embraced treatment because that’s just the reality of what we’re facing,” DeSantis told Fox News’ Mark Levin.
DeSantis has said he is only focused on his reelection in November, but his name is still being mentioned often as a potential 2024 Republican presidential contender, along with another famous Florida resident, former President Donald Trump.
To that point, DeSantis poses a bigger threat to President Biden in 2024 than does Trump, according to a Marquette Law School survey that showed Biden beating both men but beating DeSantis by a lesser margin.
The survey’s results, however, don’t gibe with several others in recent weeks showing Biden’s job approval rating sinking lower by the month.
“Biden appears to be losing ground with the American people, as the pandemic endures, inflation continues to rise, and his Democratic Party doubles down on what appear to be unpopular legislative priorities,” Conservative Brief reported earlier this month, citing a CIVIQS rolling job approval average showing Biden falling to just 35 percent.
