Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Tuesday he plans to ask the state Supreme Court to investigate “any and all wrongdoing” connected to the COVID-19 vaccines, comparing the effort to recent rulings against manufacturers and distributors of opioids.
DeSantis said the state of Florida “got $3.2 billion through legal action against those responsible for the opioid crisis. So, it’s not like this is something that’s unprecedented.” Florida was one of hundreds of states, municipalities and other plaintiffs to get money from a landmark 2019 settlement with several pharmaceutical companies.
DeSantis appeared alongside Florida surgeon general Joseph Ladapo, who has advocated against mask and vaccine mandates, from a “virtual set” reminiscent of the end of “Matrix Reloaded” (these two are way less entertaining than Neo and the Architect, however). During the appearance DeSantis announced that he would be creating what he referred as the Public Health Integrity Committee, a kind of anti-CDC to which DeSantis will appoint members.
“‘Our CDC, at this point, anything they put out, you just assume, at this point, that it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on,’” DeSantis said during the roundtable.
DeSantis is hotly tipped as a potential Republican frontrunner for the 2024 presidential election and has been involved in increasingly outrageous publicity stunts, including picking a fight with the Walt Disney Company over its opposition to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation.
DeSantis will have to primary Donald Trump, who says he is running for the Republican nomination despite a string of embarrassments in the midterms that ended with the second defeat of Herschel Walker. Certainly not lost on DeSantis: Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” is the reason for the vaccine rollout in 2020.