Ron DeSantis Caught On Camera Bullying Students For Wearing Masks

At an event at USF this week, Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis was caught on camera berating students for wearing masks on stage. The angered governor told the students that they didn't have to wear them because they allegedly "do nothing" and then he accused them of engaging in "COVID theater." The only one engaging in theater is the idiot governor who refuses to understand science, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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

During a press conference yesterday, well, actually before a press conference yesterday, Ron DeSantis decided that he was unhappy that some of the college students and high school students on the stage with him were wearing masks and it was caught on camera how he berated the children for wearing their face coverings. Take a look at this video.

You do not have to wear those masks. I mean, please take em' off. Honestly, it's not doing anything and we gotta stop with this covid theater. So if you wanna wear it fine. But this is a, this is ridiculous. All right, well, it's good to be at USF.

Again, these are young college students and in fact, some of them it has been confirmed were from a local high school. So high school students up there too, and DeSantis walks up to them, gives them false medical information because yes, masks do work. And then says, this is ridiculous. I mean, leave it on if you want, but this is ridiculous. You, all, you had to say, by the way, was nothing. Now a lot of people I've seen on social media believe that this was staged, that Ron DeSantis knew these kids were wearing masks and had planned on going up there and saying that. But either way, it still doesn't matter. It doesn't change what happened at all. And it fact it only makes it worse if he had planned on doing that by intentionally bringing up the kids on stage that were wearing masks.

Not to mention this was from what, what channel was that? I believe WFLA, it says right there on the bottom. So this was a local news station that was covering the event that probably he didn't know for certain had their cameras rolling at that time. Usually they don't catch these kind of hot mic moments on purpose. So I, I think it's a, a big, big stretch to say that this was intentional because he didn't know that that camera was rolling. But nevertheless, what kind of a bully, right? What kind of a small insignificant man goes up there and berates these children and young adults for wearing a face covering during a pandemic, which for the record yesterday killed over 2400 people here in the United States. We may all be acting like the pandemic is over, but it is not. The death toll, the average death toll that we are currently seeing for the past month is the highest we've ever seen in the pandemic.

I mean, you could argue that it's literally worse than ever in terms of deaths, because it is. And this guy DeSantis, who is taking his medical advice from his handpicked surgeon general Ladapo, who at one point had a great medical career, but turned into a complete quack, which is why DeSantis picked him, has the audacity to go up there and get onto these kids. How do you know, by the way, that none of these kids had compromised immune systems? You have no way of knowing that. You have no way of knowing if they live with somebody with a compromised immune system. Maybe they've been exposed to COVID and it hasn't been long enough for them to test positive or negative yet. Maybe they have colds. There's all kinds of different circumstances why those children or young adults, excuse me, would need to wear a mask.

But DeSantis doesn't care about any of that. The masks don't work, he said. Really? You want to tell that to any hospital worker here in the United States, you want to tell that to surgeons performing open heart surgeries right now, run into the operating room, scream, take off your mask.