Florida Governor Engaged In Pay To Play For Vaccine Delivery

According to reports, Florida's Republican governor Ron DeSantis engaged in a bit of a "pay to play" situation with Publix grocery stores, after the grocery chain gave $100,000 to his campaign back in December. Shortly after that DeSantis announced that Publix would become the only pharmacy in the state allowed to administer the vaccine in the initial rollout. This was reported more than a month ago, but the story just now became national news after 60 Minutes covered it this past weekend. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The news has been buzzing for several days now, after 60 minutes reported over the weekend that Florida's Trump loving Republican governor, Ron DeSantis gave public supermarket, uh, basically exclusive access to deliver the COVID 19 vaccine in the state. Shortly after Publix gave Ron DeSantis, his pack $100,000. That $100,000 donation was made back in December. And then of course in January DeSantis announced that, Hey, in addition to, you know, public health agencies and hospitals, I'm going to let Publix and Publix alone administer the vaccines. No CVS, no Walgreens. Y'all, don't get to participate during these first few phases of vaccine rollout that by the way, has now been lifted and other pharmacies are allowed, but in the early days, it was either go to a hospital or a, a public health clinic or go to Publix.

And we reported on this almost two months ago, we did a segment. Actually, I did two segments on it. You can go back and find them in our archives. They're two segments on this. I did. And it just now became national news because 60 minutes reported on it. This has been known for months and months and months and 60 minutes just now finally got around to talking about it and Hey, it's great that it's national news. Now. It's great. That DeSantis is alleged pay to play is being exposed. But for the love of God, let's not act like 60 minutes. Just uncovered this bomb show here. No reporters in the state of Florida uncovered this it's ago and they deserve the credit. But all of that aside, this is a truly disgusting thing that our governor has as done here in the state of Florida.

Publix has now ministered 25% of the COVID-19 vaccines. Where's the money for that come from the government. So Publix is raking in huge cash, even though the vaccine obviously is free to the public, the government still pay for it. And they're paying Publix to administer it. I think would I like $10 a shot, I think is what they get from the state. So they're making money hand over fist administering this vaccine before the other competitors were allowed to enter the market. This is ridiculous. Honestly, I feel like this probably would have been bigger news if the press was allowed to focus on DeSantis and all of his action, but something, it came up, something came up in this time that kind of drew the media's attention away. Do you know what it was? You got by the name of Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York and his refusal to step down because Cuomo stayed in office.

And because more allegations came out against him, not just with the women, but also with the nursing home and COVID death rates and his cover up of all of that, he garnered the national, he was the one who stayed in focused by refusing to step down, allowing people like DeSantis. And by the way, I said this a month ago as well, but allowing people like DeSantis to fly under the radar until it was too late. Yeah, I do blame Cuomo a little bit for this because had he done the right thing? Had he stepped down, we wouldn't be talking about him anymore. We wouldn't have been talking about him for the past month.