President Donald Trump has said throughout the novel coronavirus pandemic that the governor in his home state of Florida has made the toughest decisions about how to run the state on his own, even though the two have spoken regularly ahead of big announcements.
But before starting to lift a prolonged, government-mandated shutdown in Florida — a statewide stay-at-home order is expiring Thursday at midnight — Gov. Ron DeSantis traveled Tuesday to Washington to meet face-to-face with his state’s most powerful resident.
“I’ve worked with the White House on kind of going to Phase One. I’m going to make an announcement tomorrow,” DeSantis told reporters in the Oval Office. “But I think, for Florida, going from where we are now to Phase One is not a very big leap.”
Trump, whose popularity in Florida has been slipping according to recent polls, invited DeSantis to the White House Tuesday for what he described as “a little bit of an unplanned meeting,” volunteering to the handful of people gathered that “Ron has been great.” At another point in the meeting, Trump offered to hold a large display board DeSantis had brought with him to tout Florida’s efforts to protect nursing home residents.
“I’ll be an easel,” Trump said.
DeSantis and Trump have leaned on each other throughout the coronavirus crisis, a trend that is continuing as Trump pushes states to reopen businesses “as quickly as possible.”
DeSantis has moved more slowly than some other Republican governors in reopening businesses, but is soon expected to begin allowing hospitals to accept patients for elective procedures and has allowed some local governments to reopen beaches and parks.
The governor said Tuesday that he planned to review a report issued by his reopening task force before announcing his next steps. But he argued during the meeting that he’s been more successful than other governors around the country in stemming the spread of the coronavirus without damaging the economy by controversially leaving decisions up to local governments — a microcosm of Trump’s tactics throughout most of the crisis.
“Everyone in the media was saying Florida was going to be like New York or Italy, and that hasn’t happened,” said DeSantis, who spoke with Trump the morning before he issued a statewide stay-at-home order on April 1. “We understood the outbreak wasn’t uniform throughout our state and we had a tailored and measured approach that not only helped our numbers be way below what anyone predicted but also did less damage to our state workforce.”
When a reporter at Tuesday’s meeting asked DeSantis if he was concerned about flights coming in from Latin America — prompting DeSantis to say he had concerns about emerging hotspots in Brazil — Trump asked DeSantis if he would cut off flights from other countries.
“We’ll be watching. You’ll let us know,” Trump said to him, adding later that the White House was looking at requiring masks and testing for passengers flying into the U.S. from Brazil. “We’re looking at it closely. We’re in coordination with other governors also, but in particular with Ron.”
DeSantis’ meeting with Trump came at the end of a month in which four polls found Trump falling behind former Vice President Joe Biden in Florida, a key swing state that the president’s campaign has treated as a must-win. Trump made a portion of the sit-down available to reporters, unlike his meeting last week with New York’s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo.
White House Spokesman Judd Deere told McClatchy in an email that DeSantis was invited to Washington to brief the president on what Florida has done to expand testing and his plan to reopen the Florida economy while also trying to protect public health.
Trump, who hasn’t been back to Florida since visiting his residence and private club at Mar-a-Lago on the first weekend in March, said DeSantis “enjoys very high popularity” in Florida because “he’s doing a very good job.” Polls have shown that DeSantis remains popular, but is one of the few governors that has shed support while responding to the pandemic.
“We’re with the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who has done a spectacular job in Florida,” Trump said to reporters. “He came up. We talked about many things, including that he’s going to be opening up large portions, and ultimately pretty quickly, because he’s got great numbers, all of Florida.”
But the public meeting exasperated Democrats, who questioned the wisdom of the governor leaving Florida for a White House meeting on a day when the state reported 88 new COVID-19 deaths, the highest total so far for a single day.
The Florida Department of Health on Tuesday reported a total of 1,171 deaths and nearly 33,000 confirmed cases, although the true number of infections in the state is believed to be significantly higher. Meanwhile, Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity has struggled to process nearly 2 million unemployment claims in a state where the economy relies heavily on tourism and hospitality.
“I don’t know what he’s doing in Washington, D.C.,” said Gwen Graham, a former Florida congresswoman who has been one of DeSantis’ most vocal critics throughout the pandemic. “He should be in Florida listening to the experts and scientists and doctors down here, and following the data.”
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