Ron DeSantis
is starting to
attack former
President Trump
pretty regularly on the campaign trail.
And one line of attack
is about trusting Dr.
Fauci.
I think he did great for three years,
but when he turned the country
over to Fauci in March of 20,
20, that destroyed
millions of people's lives.
Well, tonight,
we have new reporting from CNN's file on
how the scientist
has definitely changed his tune on Dr.
Fauci.
My panel is back.
We're also joined by Andrew Brzezinski
from the case file.
Okay.
So tell us what you found about
what the scientists used to say versus
what he is saying today about Dr. Fauci.
Yeah, that's right.
There is some pandemic revisionism
going on with these DeSantis
attacks on Donald Trump.
Now he is attacking
Trump for praising Fauci.
We've seen his campaign do that.
We've seen that he said
that he turned the country over to Fauci.
Now, DeSantis was praising Dr.
Fauci ad in March and April of 20, 20
at the exact same time
that Donald Trump was
just at us in Florida, was citing Dr.
Fauci's guidance.
I think he said
he deferred to his judgment
to put in place
these policies
that he's now referring to as lockdowns.
Now, take a listen to this clip here
of DeSantis talking about Fauci in March.
20, 20
we chose freedom over
Fauci as
and the state of Florida
is better off as a result of doing that.
From Dr. Burks to Dr.
Fauci to the vice president,
who's worked very hard,
the surgeon general,
they are really doing a good job.
It's a tough, tough situation.
But but they're working hard.
Yeah. I mean, so basically nowadays
on the campaign trail, he's
acting as though he is Dr.
Fauci is some sort of
totalitarian who was in forcing
everybody into lockdown.
But back then,
I mean, you even found
from that same speech,
I believe, where he said that Dr.
Fauci was really, really good and really,
really helpful.
So what changed?
And you know,
what's interesting about
this is it's almost ironic in that Trump
and DeSantis pretty much
have the same position on the pandemic
like this is not some
investigative hard
work going back 30 years.
This was three years ago.
We all remember this.
Trump was calling in April
and May to open up the country.
Trump was attacking Dr. Fauci on Twitter.
He was making statements
in April of May of 20, 20,
and who was one of the first governors
to open up Ron DeSantis.
And then
Donald Trump ended up
praising him for it.
But so then, Andrew, to that point,
isn't it possible
that Governor Sanders has just evolved
or changed his position in terms
of whether or not businesses
should have been closed?
No, he absolutely extreme his position.
I mean, maybe not in a hypocrite,
hypocritical way,
but it just feels different.
What we're seeing here from him
is they're attacking the Trump campaign.
They're taking quotes from Donald Trump
where Donald Trump is saying, oh,
we needed to shut down the country.
He's talking about March.
He's talking about April of 20, 20.
These were the shut downs
these are the same shutdowns
that Ron DeSantis advocated in Florida.
So what the DeSantis campaign is doing
is they're maybe possibly cherry
picking a quote from Trump here
or there to say
that Trump supports shutdowns.
But as we all remember,
Trump was right out there
and he took a lot of heat for that
when he was calling for these reopenings
so early in the spring.
Now, can you imagine
a politician cherry picking a quote
out of context?
We're about to watch their tune.
Ron DeSantis is going to twist himself
into a pretzel buy at the mall.
And that's what you're going to that's
running after Trump
and trumping Trump over trumping Trump
under Trump.
It's hard to find the line
where the Trump people still like you
and the independents like you, too.
And I don't know
if Ron can do that being more Trump,
but also less Trump than Trump.
Honestly, I'm confused
So will this about face?
Will it will people hold it against
Ron as Edison?
The Trump people will.
And I think Andrew, as usual,
file strikes again
to point out the hypocrisy.
I think the question is
whether hypocrisy still sticks
in a Trump Republican Party does it
doesn't matter.
Used to be the unforgivable sin in politics
that was before.
Donald Trump doesn't stick on Trump.
Yeah.
But you know,
I think the larger point is,
look, in the beginning of March,
everyone's galvanizing
and then all of a sudden
not only the pandemic kicks in,
but that particular form of cynicism
that says what unites us
in the Republican
with the Republican base
is to own the libs
and then all of a sudden to define,
demonize, Dr.
Fauci and fundraise off
off of demonizing Dr. Fauci.
What do you think, Congressman?
Well, while it was the worst of times
when COVID first hit
my best memory of
it was how
well everyone was working together,
whether you're a Republican
or Democrat,
whether you're the president,
Congress, mayors, governors.
I was here in New York
with a president Trump,
a Governor Cuomo
and and members of Congress
on both sides.
Everyone just wanted to work together
to get stuff done
for the first few weeks.
Quite frankly,
no one really knew
exactly what was happening.
What we did know
is that we needed to be as best
prepared as we can for
what could end up
being the worst case scenario.
And and really, it's hard
to find contrast
and division in those initial few weeks.
And it doesn't matter
whether you are the furthest left
or furthest right, what party you are,
what level of government you are.
Everybody was working together.
What do you think about
Governor Sanders now changing his tune?
So I think, well,
after you get through
those first few weeks
and as more information starts
coming out now,
you have governors
taking two very different
paths across the country.
There was different schedules
for reopening.
There's different policies on masks
and then different policies on
on vaccine mandates.
Governor DeSantis
was somebody
who was one of the first governors
who was seeking to reopen his state.
I remember Governor
Kemp doing that in Georgia.
And it was a big contrast and controversy
with these other states.
Where they're saying, hey,
you can't reopen this quickly.
And there are other states
at the other extreme
that were volunteering themselves
to be the last to reopen.
Does that make Dr.
Welch's advice in March of 2020
now wrong?
I think so.
My biggest concern,
my biggest concern
back in March, April, was that
the doctor, Dr.
Felt, was still looking at this
from a health standpoint.
And there were so many other
dynamics of it.
There were impacts on on kids, on their
you know, getting them
back in the school, the remote learning,
not having access to broadband.
And that's just one specific example.
The impact on the economy.
Dr.
Fauci, is
he was not there to be
an economic expert.
So what
I think would have been much better
if you were to overanalyze that moment is
if you had, you know,
if somebody is there as a health expert
or health experts.
And you also have people
who are economic experts and folks
who are out there
sticking up for the kids
and you're coming up with decisions
that are more of a balance
then I think that there would have been
a better solution struck.
But it is true for
I mean,
Governor DeSantis
to talk
about how
he was one of the first states,
one of the first governors
to be reopening.
But go back to March.
Everybody was getting along
at every level.
It's getting in your craw, John.
I think it's that the politicization
of the pandemic ended up
contributing to the deaths of over
a million Americans.
And I think what Lee is saying
is those initial days when we were united
in some ways
that showed the best of the country
and rallying to a crisis
and then the politicization
of the pandemic occurred
in different states
at different solutions,
which is difficult
to do during a pandemic.
The laboratories of democracy
as we all know they are.
But that politicization ended up
spreading disinformation
that contributed
to the deaths of people
who didn't need to die.
And I don't remember Dr.
Fauci stopping
Ron DeSantis
from doing anything that he did
as Florida governor.
So I don't know.
He was he was critical of them in July.
Dr. Fauci was critical.
I was critical of the
because he was taking it
from a medical point of view.
And Ron DeSantis
was taking it
from a business
and economic policy
that the kids needed to be in school.
Yes.
And so when he called
but what he now calls Dr.
Fauci a destructive bureaucrat,
that is different than how he felt. Yes.
And I think making his got
a big part of this, too, is that
the attacks on Trump,
it's are hypocritical
because the quotes
that he's using to attack
Trump are from that same time
period that that,
like Congressman
Zeldin said,
where everybody was along the same page.
Okay, thank you very much
for unearthing this
and sharing it with us.
Andrew, great to see you.