‘Embarrassingly Bad’: DeSantis Fans Pan Candidate For Offering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a Job in His Administration
Longtime fans of Florida Governor and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis (R) minced no words in their critiques of comments DeSantis made during a recent interview indicating he’d consider Democrat and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a job.
During an interview with OutKick’s Clay Travis, DeSantis said that while he wouldn’t choose Kennedy as his running mate, he might consider “siccing him” on the Food and Drug Administration or Centers for Disease Control.
“I’m aligned with him on Fauci and the corruption and the health bureaucracies 100%. And I think he’s probably done said some other things that I agree with, too. But the end of the day, you know, he’s more liberal,” explained DeSantis before concluding “and so on that regard, it’s like, okay, if you’re president, sic him on the FDA. If he’d be willing to serve, or sic him on CDC.”
“But in terms of being Veep, if there’s, you know, 70% of the issues that he may be averse to our base on, you know, that just creates an issue,” he said.
The friendly comments about the Democratic candidate frustrated many conservatives in the media who have been optimistic about DeSantis’s candidacy.
“It’s flat-out insanity for DeSantis to mention RFK Jr. within the same sentence as the FDA or CDC, let alone as a potential appointee to do anything related to medicine,” tweeted National Review‘s Charles C.W. Cooke, who debunked false claims about the DeSantis administration’s handling of the pandemic.
“RFK Jr.’s a kook who’d improve nothing. (The full answer’s even worse than this clip,)” he added.
“Embarrassingly bad answer from DeSantis,” chimed in National Review editor Philip Klein, who in a later tweet accused the candidate of being “terrified of losing face among ‘based’ cons.”
Fox News’ Guy Benson expressed his displeasure with the suggestion more succinctly, quote-tweeting the clip with the caption “Nope.”
“Far and away the worst decision DeSantis has made is playing footsie with cranks who hate modern medicine and would slow-walk vaccine development in a future pandemic,” argued the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium.
Columnist Varad Mehta, a particularly vocal supporter of DeSantis, submitted that “Pre-2023 DeSantis would’ve had the intelligence and basic political savvy and instincts not to get within a parsec of RFK, Jr. No amount of firing staff and campaign resets, reboots, and shakeups can make up for the candidate himself scoring own goals like that.”
“You can tell from the reaction that Ron DeSantis’ comments re: RFK, Jr. is the first time that his most ardent supporters on Twitter have been truly upset with something he’s done or said,” noticed Mehta in a later tweet.
DeSantis rose to national prominence during the pandemic in part due to his opposition to onerous Covid-19 vaccine mandates, but in recent days, his campaign has played footsie with anti-vaccine sentiment.
Last month, the DeSantis campaign’s “War Room” account highlighted the moment when an Iowa voter asserted that people were dying because of the Covid vaccines, and Trump responded by touting its benefits.
Watch above via OutKick.
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