DeSantis: States That Kept Kids Out Of Schools Destroyed Some Kid’s Futures, Impact Will Last ‘Years’

Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned during a Fox News town hall Wednesday night that the impacts of states keeping kids out of school during the pandemic will last years and cause some kids to lose their futures.

“Well, I think it’s been probably the biggest mistake, tragedy is locking these kids out of school,” DeSantis said about governors who kept kids out of schools. “They’re not following science. This is politics and ideology and quite frankly it’s a disgrace. I was in Baker County, Florida. They celebrated the 180th day of being open, the full school year. They did the full school year, finished it today from the very beginning and every single parent from the beginning had the right to send their kids to school in person.”

“I think there’s obviously a lot of other policies that really mattered. Obviously, we didn’t,” DeSantis continued. “We prevented COVID patients from being sent to nursing homes. We created COVID only nursing facilities to protect the most vulnerable. I think that that mattered. But I can tell you locking kids out of school for over a year, that’s going to have ramifications for our country and those states. It’s not going to be days, weeks, months. It’s going to be years. And some of these kids are not going to have a future as a result of those bad policies.”

DeSantis said another thing Florida did differently was prioritize vaccinating the elderly instead of focusing on politically-motivated pushes for “equity.”

WATCH:

Fla’s @GovRonDeSantis: Unlike @NYGovCuomo, we ensured schools remained open and we prevented Covid patients from being put into nursing homes pic.twitter.com/GWRwSsD1GB

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 27, 2021

TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED VIA FOX NEWS:

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: You know, Governor DeSantis, so funny because you had a row of two with your buddy Andrew Cuomo in New York. And, you know, I’m looking at these other states that kids still aren’t in school. Florida schools have been opened since August. How is it possible they’re watching you do this successfully and they still don’t learn from it?

RON DESANTIS, FLORIDA GOVERNOR: Well, I think it’s been probably the biggest mistake, tragedy is locking these kids out of school. They’re not following science. This is politics and ideology and quite frankly it’s a disgrace. I was in Baker County, Florida. They celebrated the 180th day of being open — the full school year. They did the full school year, finished it today from the very beginning and every single parent from the beginning had the right to send their kids to school in person. I think there’s obviously a lot of other policies that really mattered. Obviously, we didn’t. We prevented COVID patients from being sent to nursing homes. We created COVID only nursing facilities to protect the most vulnerable. I think that that mattered. But I can tell you locking kids out of school for over a year, that’s going to have ramifications for our country and those states. It’s not going to be days, weeks, months. It’s going to be years. And some of these kids are not going to have a future as a result of those bad policies.

HANNITY: You may not remember but the very first interview we did since we — once we began to understand how severe this was, you told me and I never forgot it that you mobilized every single state agency in Florida to protect the elderly, to protect the older population in your state which is significant.

DESANTIS: Yes. And so the results are 40 states have higher per capita mortality for age 65 and up compared to Florida. So we’re one of the top 10 safest states for seniors. We prioritize our seniors for vaccination. CDC was saying do equity and political considerations. I said, no way. If your 65 and up, we’re getting you the vaccine. And I think we’ve done 4 million seniors who’ve been vaccinated.

HANNITY: And how great in places like Publix free of charge because they wanted to take care of their community, at CVS and all these other —

DESANTIS: And you know what Sean, that would not have happened had President Trump not put the pedal to the metal, got those bureaucrats in line and said, we’ve got to come up with this vaccine. If Biden had been president, this would have taken three or four years to be able to develop these vaccines. So you think about we started vaccinating seniors in December. We hit a million seniors in January, two million in February. I mean, those were lives that were saved as a result of that presidential leadership.

HANNITY: Well, I think saying President Biden and Warp Speed, they’re direct opposites —

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