Republican Florida Governor Could Face FBI Probe Over Vaccine Favoritism

Florida's Republican governor Ron DeSantis is facing calls for an FBI probe of his decision to prioritize wealthy communities filled with his donors to receive the COVID vaccine. The governor has done one of the worst jobs of handling the pandemic, and now he only wants to help those who helped him win office. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Florida's democratic agriculture commissioner commissioner, Nicki Fried called this week for an FBI probe into potential abuses of power by Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, and the abuses of power that freed alleges to have taken place, which have been confirmed by media outlets are that DeSantis has in fact been directing vaccines towards wealthy communities that gave him tons of money and essentially propelled him to the governorship. That is what we are looking at here in the state of Florida. And I know we've talked about it in the past. And finally, we have a Democrat in Florida with enough courage and power, by the way, to stand up and say, the FBI has to investigate this guy because it's very obvious what he's doing. All right. She pointed out, um, the Miami Herald actually, uh, said that, uh, all of those over 65 in a wealthy key Largo community called ocean reef club have received vaccines and they received them by mid January.

So these people got vaccines a little over a month and a half ago in this wealthy community. Um, it then goes on to say that three communities in Charlotte, Manatee and Sarasota counties, uh, developed by Republican fundraiser, Pat Neal were chosen by DeSantis for popup sites, which is what we'd talked about in the past. Uh, Neil contributed $125,000 to DeSantis in 2018. And in 2019 only two zip codes were eligible at the Manatee site and County commissioner. Vanessa bough included herself and the development CEO on a VIP list. Also for that other community, the coral reef community, 17 members of that community had donated at least $5,000 to DeSantis his campaign. So it's pretty obvious when you look at the data, what he is doing, he is sending these vaccine. They're calling them pods, these little pop-up sites, almost kind of like the ice cream man running around the neighborhood in his truck, except his COVID vaccines.

And they're all going to the wealthy communities and to make matters worse. At one point when one of these counties was angry that all the vaccines were concentrated in the wealthy zip codes, DeSantis, threatened them and said, if you continue to talk crap, I'm going to take the vaccines out of your entire County and none of y'all get them. So we're talking about the same kind of like tough guy, thuggish, uh, mentality that is typically reserved for as people think, you know, Chicago politics, but we're seeing it right down here with this buffoon running our state of Florida. Ron DeSantis has absolutely without question been one of the worst governors in handling the COVID 19 pandemic, you know, a big stink was made this week. Cause Oh, Texas and Mississippi lifted all their mask requirement. We never even had one in Florida. We never even had a mask mandate in the state of Florida. So yes, it's horrible that these governors are now lifting theirs, but hell at least they had them. At some point we never got that. He in fact, actually months and months ago made it illegal for counties to, uh, enforce their own mask mandates. Cause he forced every County, every city to go it alone and come up with their own rules. And then he said, you know what? Now it's illegal for you to have your own rules. Oh, you can have them, but you can't forced them.

That's what we're dealing with here. And then of course the vaccine start rolling out and he says, Hey, go down to my wealthy donors first. Cause I got to keep them alive. Oh, you do realize that it's the over 65 population that keeps these guys in charge. Right. And of course that's why he would want them to get the vaccine first, not just the wealthy donors, but his voters in general, the rest of us, he doesn't care. Luckily enough, there have been some areas, uh, in the past couple of weeks that have opened up more vaccines for people under the age of 65, I myself was lucky enough to be able to get on one of those based on preexisting conditions. I was actually contacted by a hospital and said, Hey, you're in our records, you have these conditions. Um, you're eligible come on in. And I did actually go for my second dose next week. I'm super excited, but that's not the norm. If you're not wealthy in the state of Florida, you're at the bottom of the list and that's not an accident.