In the transactional mindset that governs former president Donald Trump's approach to everything, it makes sense he would seek to attack his leading rival for the Republican nomination for president, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, over the one thing that endeared the latter most to GOP voters: his record during the coronavirus pandemic.
But rather than merely dismiss these attacks as a classic Trump tactic—lobbing fallacious claims to enrage opponents while blithely moving on to other attacks and never acknowledging where he has misspoken—the former president has highlighted something that ought to be discussed in 2024.
During the pandemic, Republicans hailed DeSantis for being the slowest to lock down his state and the quickest to reopen. His supporters took to referring to "the free state of Florida" and DeSantis' pandemic response, along with his determination to fight the Left on culture issues and a reputation for competence, brought him a reelection landslide in 2022.
But since that triumph propelled DeSantis into the presidential race, Trump is doing everything he can to undermine the governor. Trump's May 25 video rant posted on Truth Social depicted DeSantis as a COVID failure and compared his record unfavorably to that of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
In 2020, the Left regarded DeSantis as, next to Trump, the leading GOP COVID villain. That was in contrast to Cuomo, whose Emmy Award-winning press conferences made him, at least for a time, Democrats' pandemic idol. But now, much like his claim that under DeSantis, Florida is a "high-tax hellhole," Trump praises Cuomo despite his adherence to lockdowns and mask mandates.
DeSantis' stance led to better results in terms of excess deaths and economic damage. And that's not even taking into account Cuomo's disastrous March 2020 order forcing nursing homes to accept recovered COVID patients, leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths, a mistake DeSantis avoided.
The pushback against his charge was so strong that it forced Trump to partially walk back his praise for the now-disgraced Cuomo. But with a 30-point lead over DeSantis, the absurdity of him smearing the state to which he and his children moved after the end of his presidency may not matter.
Yet it should.
One of the most frustrating aspects of our public discourse has been the absence of an honest debate about the government's role in turning a serious public health challenge into a full-fledged disaster. Those responsible for lockdowns that did far more harm than good have not been held accountable. The same is true about mask mandates and school closures—which did great damage to a generation of children who were clearly not at risk from the disease, the extent of which we may not fully understand for many years.
Trump acts as if none of this has anything to do with him. In 2020, he struck a skeptical tone about these measures, for which he was lambasted by Democrats and their media cheerleaders. But he didn't stop any of it from happening.
The "15 days to slow the spread" lockdowns continued for months with Trump's acquiescence. While the liberal narrative about Trump being responsible for COVID deaths was always false, it is true that the president lacked the will to push back against advisers who were steering the country on a disastrous course that tanked the economy and left Americans isolated, stripped of their constitutional rights, poorer, and more miserable.
Trump deserves and continues to take credit for his determination to push for the creation of COVID vaccines far more quickly than anyone believed possible. Yet even they didn't provide the deliverance Americans prayed for. They made the disease less serious for those who got the shot. But they neither protected the vaccinated against getting COVID or prevented its spread.
Similarly, President Joe Biden shouldn't want to debate what he did in 2021 and 2022 as the endless public health emergency continued long after it made any sense. He supported pointless mask mandates, which became the blue team equivalent of the red MAGA cap. He vilified the unvaccinated and insisted on vaccine mandates that didn't save lives and, again, did more harm than good.
Vainglorious public health authorities like Anthony Fauci, whose ever-shifting pronouncements were unmoored from any real notion of science, no longer have any credibility. But those who presided over failed policies, be they Trump, Biden, or Cuomo, should also be held accountable.
Since both Trump and Biden intend to be on the ballot while Cuomo hopes to revive his career, COVID accountability should be a major issue in 2024. Trump may have thought turning the truth on its head would hurt DeSantis. But such a discussion is something that Trump—as well as Biden—shouldn't welcome.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
