Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was ruthlessly mocked on Friday by former Republican strategist turned Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson, for latching onto culture war issues that voters moved on from years ago.
"I am going to bring a reckoning to these agencies for what they did to this country during COVID," wrote DeSantis on X. "Why? Because if we don’t hold them accountable, they are going to try to do it again — and we can never let this happen in our country again."
"The horse is dead, Ron. Stop beating it," wrote Wilson in a reply. "You’ve already lost, you know it, and this is one last desperate, sweaty, and pathetic attempt to stoke the antivax loons."
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DeSantis built much of his political brand identity on opposing COVID mandates, even though he initially imposed some at the start of the crisis just as every other governor did. He has taken it to an extreme, hiring a state surgeon general with a history of endorsing vaccine conspiracy theories, who has actively recommended against boosters for the nonelderly.
But COVID has largely receded from the headlines and from culture wars as vaccines have become widely available and deaths got under control. Moreover, insofar as there is any talk of it on the right, former president Donald Trump has used it as a weapon against DeSantis, attacking him over his initial lockdowns and over the death-rate figures of his state.
Recent polling aggregates on FiveThirtyEight have shown that DeSantis, once a solid competitor to Trump who led him in some early polls, is trailing him by over 45 points.
