The Fattening in Florida: Ron DeSantis’s rapidly expanding girth

If You were that stupid bastard You’d stress eat too. Like his pie hole model he’s in over his head, trapped, and he knows it.

You almost made me spit out my beverage, OP.

He’s expanding like violet Beauregard after she ate the blueberry.

Look how his arms can't even reach forward because of his girth.

Why does he keep saying “quote cases.” Why would cases be in quotes?

Soon he will get his own TLC show: “My 600 Pound Governor”.

I had the impression he was getting larger too, OP - I'm glad it's not just me.

He is one ugly bastard, that much I do know.

Swallowing your pride and licking Trump’s ass must be high in calories.

He was a cutie pie,before he turned into an ass sucking trumpster . He is piling on the weight,I bet 50-60 lbs since he got elected.

She must be close to 300 now.

If Florida elected governors in the same year we elected presidents, we wouldn't have to put up with this ongoing GOP bullshit.

Dang, someone get him a carton of cigarettes. Definitely stress eating.

Miss Gillum would have gained just as much weight so lay off y'all.

Personally, I think she’s a closet case who’s eating her emotions. He has the gayest gay voice that ever gayed. Close your eyes when he’s speaking and you can hear the purses falling out.

Well he stole the election now he has to deal with it.

R14 nah, she would have just washed down diet pills with sangria.

This is what happens when you engorge on the public dime.

Emulating his hero tRump in every way. I picture them both shoving McDonald's french fries by the handful into their mouths as they speak on the phone.

Ron DeSantis is just a few pounds away from Chris Christie. Maybe It’s a thing with dumbass republican governors who kill their own citizens because their heads are buried up trump’s ass.

Straight guys burn their fat off by fucking, usually their side whores. Now, it's harder to get away for a tryst, so the fat is packing on.

Fat ass like his leader.

Haha! Bitch is eating his feelings because he’s a wuss who’s about to go through what Cuomo went through but he was too fucking stupid to listen to science and how he has to live with the fact that he’s killed a lot of people in his state for no fucking reason. I hope they haunt him for the next ten generations. Asshole.

Governining is hard, y'all.

He looks great! Trim, athletic - we share the same clothes! Terrific Governor! Terrific athlete!

He eats only the BEST - I can assure you that - the BEST!

All of my slaves in my dungeon get TERRIFIC food after our 'sessions'. And no Jeff, that wasn't a cloaked invitation to come back. You are BANNED.

Wow he did really pork up.

Another one who’s ballooned.

He looks like the guy who lied about his wife being dead so that Rose Nylund would sleep with him.

My mother saw a snippet of his press conference today and exclaimed “That’s the governor of Florida? Eww! He’s so fat!”

Who knew evil was so fattening.

He needs a Meth dealer quick!

With Google image search, I can't find a pic of him when he's not a chubetta.

He wasn’t as fat when he won the election. He still had a punchable face though, as does his ugly witch of a wife. They’re both hideous inside and out.

How do people let themselves go like that?

Do all these republicans just sit around and order stakes and desserts and unlimited trips to the buffet and charge it to tax payers?

It takes a lot of money to stay that overstuffed.

He surely is ample. I’ll give you that.

Pffft!

Is there a before and after?

What is his zip code?

he copies Trump's hand gestures while speaking.

He looks like a used car dealer.

He looks like he ought to be selling tacos from a stand on wheels somewhere, while wearing one of those humongous Mexican hats. Aaaaaaaayeeeeeeeeeee!

She once was a pretty thing.

[quote]He has the gayest gay voice that ever gayed. Close your eyes when he’s speaking and you can hear the purses falling out.

I actually like his speaking voice, its really pleasant. Its too bad he's Rethug scum of the earth. IFFHH if he wasnt

If you can still find it now.

i'll suck gravy out of his tits

I'll be portraying him in the film, ""Kung Flu".

You know what? I still would.

So what if he's put on a couple of pounds? Not everyone can or wants to be a size zero twig. I think there's nothing sexier than some curves to hold onto. Being confident in your own skin is so much more appealing than fulfilling some unrealistic body standards. I have a little something extra and I know my DH really appreciates it.

All he needs to do is have Trump’s doctor weigh him. He’ll be 175 pounds.

Yes, and back in the real world he'll be closer to 275 pounds.

He looks like he will have a heart condition in a couple years.

You all will make fun of this guy but not Governor Fred Flintstone of Illinois???

His flabs of fat are ready to burst the seams of his jacket!

This man is stress-eating. No doubt about it.

Based on his politics, he's a total pig, but I strangely find him kind of cute, even with the extra weight. He's a bigoted Republican asshole, which are the qualities that really make him repulsive, not his size.

I agree with R56. His big biceps are about to rip the sleeves on his jacket. I like his feathered hair.

Washington Post used a great picture of his fatface.

He loves Trump so much he's turning into him. Maybe they want a doppelgänger if the grease in Trump's veins finally blocks all his arteries.

If DoRitos dyes his hair, the goose flies at night!

[quote]His big biceps are about to rip the sleeves on his jacket.

Uh, pics please.

Can't find any pics, but you can tell by how tight the jacket's sleeves look.

His already beady eyes are quickly receding into the fat folds of his face.

I think he looks like Jeremy Renner.

He has a very coarse look...

Good to see he’s wearing one of those long, red, slimming, trump neck ties.

Of coursr, Datalounge is the first place to notice. But just yesterday I saw a shot of him lumbering across a stage and he looks like he's about ready to pop.

Of coursr, Datalounge is the first place to notice. But just yesterday I saw a shot of him lumbering across a stage and he looks like he's about ready to pop.

[quote] He looks like he will have a heart condition in a couple years.

A couple of years? I am sure he presently has some form of heart disease.

People are noticing!

He was pretty cute when a young athlete. Still would be a good looking 40 something if he hadn't entered into obesity. He's so busy denying the consequences of the virus and keeping research data from being released where does he get the time to continually stuff his face? I thought all buffets had been closed.

[quote] where does he get the time to continually stuff his face?

His Stepford wife/hag/beard gladly cooks a 10 course meal for him every night.

She looks terrible

He’s easily over 300 now

He's another traitor who needs to immensely regret his support for that walking orange hate crime.

I love his hair!

R12 writes,

[quote]If Florida elected governors in the same year we elected presidents, we wouldn't have to put up with this ongoing GOP bullshit.

36 states hold the gubernatorial elections in midterm elections. 9 of them are Top 10 populous states. (Exception is North Carolina.)

The Florida Democratic Party is the one is thoroughly corrupt, and conveniently corrupt, and you look to the fact that the party hasn’t won the governorship of Florida since 1994. And this in a presidential bellwether state that has voted for all winners, except in 1960 and 1992, since 1928. The Democrats have no excuse.

God help DeSantis if he decides to eat his feelings.

Whenever she surfaces it's bound to be dramatic.

"Who'd have thought he'd have come floating up for a visit af-tah twenty years?"

Whoops.

He is eating to fend off the Corona.

I hope soon it's Corona eating him.

Just saw on the news that Missy got her hair did today. Makes her face look even fatter.

Pretty soon he won't be able to see outta that fat face of his.

He'll need some toothpicks to prop the fat folds open so he can peer out.

He subscribes to the old adage: "Feed a pol, and starve a covid fever."

If he would just lose a pound or two, he would be back to his muscular, Adonis self.

He's fatter than Trump now.

IMAGINARY FRENCH DIP

Twitter's noticed too.

R43, Christ, he was so handsome in that photo. I hate to say it, though; he’s a despicable bastard.

DeSatan better be careful, he is heading for Chris Christie territory but then again birds of feather....

Still sexy. Fat fit, my favorite kind of fit. I will roll with him.

Because the number of COVID cases in Florida have skyrocketed, some have started calling him "DeathSantis."

Morbidly obese!

^ LOL.

Andrew Gillum may be a raging meth queen, but he would've put Florida on lockdown.

[quote] Andrew Gillum may be a raging meth queen, but he would've put Florida on lockdown.

and still would have looked hot doing so...

I can't believe he's only forty-one. The extra weight makes him look ten years older. He doesn't look too bad now, but at fifty-one?

[quote]Andrew Gillum may be a raging meth queen, but he would've put Florida on lockdown.

And never left his hotel room for the duration.

DeSantis looks like a lot of the actors who played bad guy roles on the old Bonanza TV show.

DeSantis looks like MrHaney from Green Acres. He wears the same suit every day.

Every time a Floridian dies Ron gains a ounce.

Only one that still fits.

He looks like a greaser to me. I’m amazed to see he’s a Yale undergrad and a Harvard lawyer...

At this point he's fat fat.

lulz

#DeathSantis is now trending

When will #FatSantis trend?

His eyes are now little slits

It looks like FatSantis has switched to XXXL size jackets to minimize his flabs of fat.

He’s also developed some weird facial tics.

He should surround himself with things that make him appear slimmer, like elephants.

It's all fun and games until the button actually dies fly off and puts out someone's eye.

He wants to be as much like Trump as possible.

I've never seen his wife before. She is actually very pretty. He must come from money and disclosed his political ambitions early on.

With that type of head shape and weak chin he should have kept the pouds off. Then again, he's a sitting governor to one the fastest states and has a personal relationship with the President of the United States. So what's a few pounds.

He's cute too me as well because he reminds me of a few Craigslist tricks I've had in the past. But Andrew Gillium was a HOT! Here is younger, still douchey, DeSantis.

You can tell from this photo he must look to Chris Christie as a role model

[quote]He must come from money

Actually no, he's from a pretty working class background in the more rednecky part of Florida. My guess is that he's getting fat because he's reverting to the fatty junk food of his heritage.

He looks even wider than Trump now. He must go on a nightly binge to deal with stress

Hey look, it was a choice between either him or Andrew Gillum for Governor.

Don't worry, I voted for Andrew Gillum, but considering what's been revealed about HIM, our choices were pretty crappy that year.

What's with his skin color?

An angry dumb baseball jock who probably has untreated CTE from his military deployments.

An odd case. His face and lower arms aren't THAT fat but the body itself is Augustus Gloop.

Look at the work those shoulder pads are doing. Nolan Miller never designed a pair that big. Hell, Tom Brady has never worn a pair that big.

GOP Douche or not, Ron used to be pretty sexy during his prime - as despicable as he clearly is. Even after he gained 30 lbs. too many (and before the pandemic and the 24/7 Trump cock sucking), I had the occasional reverie of bending him over ass out and giving him a hard backdoor stretch session. Up until a few months ago, he was fairly sexy bottom fantasy fodder IMO. Now, I'm embarrassed to admit it. Not only is he bordering on grotesque to look at - he would be an obvious chili dog explosion waiting to happen.

Meh. I don’t see it r121. But then, FL has had some pretty ugly Governors. I guess he’s better than Jeb!, Miss Charlie, and Rick Scott.

At R113, he looks like one of those homophobic douche bros who spent his time in the navy loudly bitching about fags looking at him in the shower, while subtly encouraging it and secretly enjoying it.

I cant find any photos of Ron and his parents, maybe they are deceased but he's only 41. Usually when people blow up like this, they have that fat gene. No matter how skinny and perky their young bodies are, once they hit 40 those genetics take over.

Stress eating thy name is Ron.

R123 lol, that is such an awesome description.

I don't understand what DeSantis hopes to achieve by pretending Covid isn't a problem in Florida

If you say Covid isn't a problem it will miraculously disappear. Just stop with the testing and send everyone back to work.

She has been heckled! Way to go Gen Z!

Fat Facer

Ron just can't catch a break. Now the GOP convention he begged for is looking shakier and shakier:

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams says he can’t pull off security at the Republican convention because the plans aren’t clear, funding is a challenge, time is running short & he can’t get enough officers to help out.

It will be at Trump Doral or Mar A Lago.

I thought Mike Williams firmly in that weasel Curry's camp,so Im really impressed with his actions . They had a petition signed by over 200 local doctors asking the mayor to not allow this convention ,not for political reasons but health reasons. Our mayor Curry is an ass kissing clown who is desperately trying to direct attention away from the federal investigation of the attempted sale of our local power company . Our local government is as corrupt as the one in Washington. Always has been . Throw that fucking Shad Khan in the mix and its like watching pigs at a trough .

[quote] God help DeSantis if he decides to eat his feelings.

If so, he looks like he will soon be out of feelings.

He is still suffering the trauma of having to disrobe for Trump and Matt Gaytz.

^ that is VERY odd. Why would Trump ever see DeSantis without a shirt

Eyeing the competition in the golf course locker room.

Biden now up 13 in Florida

Thanks FatSantis!

Coronavirus ravaged Florida, as Ron DeSantis sidelined scientists and followed Trump

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Isaac Stanley-Becker, Lori Rozsa and Josh Dawsey
July 25 at 10:10 PM ET

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — As Florida became a global epicenter of the coronavirus, Gov. Ron DeSantis held one meeting this month with his top public health official, Scott Rivkees, according to the governor's schedule. His health department has sidelined scientists, halting briefings last month with disease specialists and telling the experts there was not sufficient personnel from the state to continue participating.
"I never received information about what happened with my ideas or results," said Thomas Hladish, a University of Florida research scientist whose regular calls with the health department ended June 29. "But I did hear the governor say the models were wrong about everything."
DeSantis (R) this month traveled to Miami to hold a roundtable with South Florida mayors, whose region was struggling as a novel coronavirus hot spot. But the Republican mayor of Hialeah was shut out, weeks after saying the governor "hasn't done much" for a city disproportionately affected by the virus.
As the virus spread out of control in Florida, decision-making became increasingly shaped by politics and divorced from scientific evidence, according to interviews with 64 current and former state and administration officials, health administrators, epidemiologists, political operatives and hospital executives. The crisis in Florida, these observers say, has revealed the shortcomings of a response built on shifting metrics, influenced by a small group of advisers and tethered at every stage to the Trump administration, which has no unified plan for addressing the national health emergency but has pushed for states to reopen.

DeSantis relies primarily on the advice of his wife, Casey, a former television reporter and host, and his chief of staff, Shane Strum, a former hospital executive, according to Republican political operatives, including a former member of his administration.
“It’s a universe of three — Shane and Casey,” said one Republican consultant close to DeSantis’s team who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment.
The response — which DeSantis boasted weeks ago was among the best in the nation — has quickly sunk Florida into a deadly morass. Nearly 5,800 Floridians have now died of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus — more deaths than were suffered in combat by Americans in Afghanistan or Iraq after 2001. One out of every 52 Floridians has been infected with the virus. The state’s intensive care units are being pushed to the brink, with some over capacity. Florida’s unemployment system is overwhelmed, and its tourism industry is a shambles.

DeSantis began the year as a popular governor, well-positioned to help his close ally President Trump win this crucial state in November's election. DeSantis is now suffering from sagging approval ratings. Trump is polling behind Democrat Joe Biden in recent polls of Florida voters. And both men, after weeks of pushing for a splashy Republican convention in Jacksonville, succumbed to the reality of the public health risks Thursday when Trump called off the event.
Trump asked DeSantis in a phone call in May whether he would require masks for the convention and whether the virus would be a problem, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. DeSantis said he would not require masks and the virus would not be a major problem in August in Florida.
“You were elected to be the governor of our state and make decisions about what is best for us in Florida,” Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernández said of DeSantis. “If he was more concerned with what the president thought of him, the outcomes are here.”
DeSantis’s office did not respond to interview requests or to a set of detailed questions sent by The Washington Post. In response to questions, a spokesman for the health department said the governor and Rivkees, the surgeon general, “are continuing to remind all Floridians to protect the vulnerable by avoiding the Three Cs: Closed Spaces, Crowded Places and Close-Contact Settings and by wearing a mask in public.”
The spokesman, Alberto Moscoso, did not explain why the department had ended its work with the university modeling team or why Rivkees appears only once this month on the governor’s schedules, which have been released through July 23.
During the same period, DeSantis spoke regularly to members of the Trump administration. He appeared twice on Fox News and called in to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.
“Ron DeSantis is doing a great job and will go down in history as a great governor of Florida,” the president told The Post through a spokeswoman.

Those who defend the governor’s approach point to his early efforts to protect nursing homes. They also dispute claims that he has been inflexible, emphasizing his decision to re-close bars and clubs last month after a spike in infections. The governor’s allies have also commended him for securing more remdesivir, an antiviral drug used to treat the most severe coronavirus patients, which is in short supply across the country.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said the governor’s relationships in Washington have benefited Florida. In the spring, the state emerged on top “in terms of supplies and resources,” because, in the telling of Trump, “we’re really good at asking for stuff,” Gaetz said.
Jared Moskowitz, a former Democratic state legislator who now heads the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said DeSantis has been “completely accessible” and “open-minded in our conversations.”
He continued: “Anything that I have needed or asked for, dollars that are going to be required to respond appropriately have always been available.”
The department’s command center was temporarily shuttered this month after a series of infections among staff working there.

Some of Florida’s woes are shared by other states, especially in the Sun Belt: economies powered by tourism and hospitality whose leaders sought reasons to invite people back to their states; skeletal public health systems that could not adequately respond with contact tracing and other interventions; and holiday celebrations that caused residents, particularly young people, to flout guidelines.
But the crisis in Florida has been especially acute, infectious-disease specialists say, because politics have dictated the response at crucial junctures — never more so than with the state’s reopening, which was cast by the governor as a return to normal rather than as a new and even more precarious phase of the pandemic.
Trump told aides that Florida’s early success gave other states a justification to reopen, according to three administration officials. Meanwhile, DeSantis quickly turned presidential rhetoric into gubernatorial orders, all while rejecting measures, including a statewide mask mandate and an extended stay-at-home order, that helped other states contain their outbreaks.
Officials involved in the local health and emergency response say DeSantis has selectively highlighted favorable metrics, such as a decline in the median age of people who are testing positive, rather than developing more serious mitigation strategies.
“I think we’re on the right course,” he said as cases surpassed 400,000 and he continued to push for schools to open for in-person classes in a few weeks.
Some on the front lines are drawing different conclusions.
“The numbers are up, my man,” said Frank Rollason, the emergency management director in hard-hit Miami-Dade County. “They speak for themselves.”

'Chance to rubber-stamp it'
The governor’s small inner circle stands in contrast to the number of people tapped for his reopening task force in April. The group included more than 100 participants but only five doctors, who were placed on a working group alongside representatives from the ­elder-care industry and farming leaders.
The working group met twice for 2½ hours, said one member, dentist Rudy Liddell, and did not develop written recommendations or provide continued input once the report of the executive committee was released at the end of the month.
The guidelines that emerged from the executive committee closely mirrored the reopening recommendations issued by the White House. There were few specific benchmarks following the first phase of a statewide reopening on May 18 — after about six weeks of sweeping restrictions — with movement into new phases premised instead on “adequate health care capacity” and the absence of a resurgence of the virus. In early June, DeSantis announced that much of the state could move into the second phase, lifting restrictions on bars and movie theaters, on the same day the state recorded 1,317 new cases, the largest surge in six weeks.
“It was outcome-determinative — they knew what they wanted to do,” said state Sen. Gary Farmer, the incoming Senate minority leader. “It was a joke. . . . It was, ‘Here’s the plan. Here’s the chance to rubber-stamp it.’ ”
As the state shifted into reopening, the Republican National Committee announced plans for its convention. The National Basketball Association opted to finish its season in Orlando. Disney World reopened July 11.
Compliance in April with the sweeping stay-at-home order brought the state’s numbers down to a point that reopening looked feasible, said Cindy Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida. The problem, she said, was the speed with which the state moved through the subsequent phases of its economic restart.
“There was hardly enough time for the new infections even to show up,” she said.
The governor’s quest to put the pandemic behind him undermined the very message — that the virus was still a deadly threat — that could have made his reopening a success, said J. Glenn Morris, director of the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute.
“One of the areas where we failed in Florida was in convincing people that as things began to open up, that we still had a serious situation, that the virus was still present in the community and that there remained a critical need to maintain the basic practices recommended by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention],” he said.
Critical mitigation strategies remain inadequate, according to lawmakers and experts, owing to years of disinvestment in the state’s public health infrastructure. One estimate, by a researcher at Florida International University, found that the state had slashed public health spending 35 percent between 2009 and 2015.
The health department’s 2017 budget request warned of “insufficient individuals at the local level who have the skills to perform epidemiological analyses” and manage outbreaks.
Contact tracing, which has been central to controlling outbreaks in other settings, has been highly limited in Florida. State Rep. Rene Plasencia, a Republican representing parts of Orange County and Brevard County, said not a single family member or friend sickened by the virus has been contacted by the health department.
With the virus tearing through urban centers, “we’re at a point where I don’t even know how you would do contact tracing anymore,” Plasencia said.

The lesson of the pandemic for Florida, said Charles Lockwood, dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Medicine, was, “Never declare victory until the referee blows the whistle.” When the wave of cases predicted this spring did not initially crash down on the state, Tampa General Hospital and the University of South Florida used the time to order ventilators and stockpile personal protective equipment, Lockwood said.
Meanwhile, steps he suggested to health officials in his county were not acted upon, including a recommendation to use cellphone technology to track at-risk patients and encouragement to stand up a more robust system of contact tracing. In both instances, he said, local health officials indicated they were constrained because these were functions controlled in Tallahassee, the state capital. The health administrator in Hillsborough County, Douglas A. Holt, declined to be interviewed.
Efforts to offer advice on contact tracing at the state level were rebuffed, as well, according to experts involved in the response. Hladish, the infectious-disease researcher, said he and other specialists had tried to raise the subject during one of their calls with department staff but were told contact tracing was handled by a different team.
“We were told that they were too busy to talk,” he said.
Even health department staff were constrained in the nature of the advice they could offer, according to state health officials stationed in counties, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing response. They said conversations with state officials have recently included reminders that they were not authorized to advise school districts about whether to reopen but simply to “provide them with information,” as one official put it.
These officials said calls that once occurred daily with Rivkees, the surgeon general, have been scaled back to three times a week. Rivkees, a pediatrician whose specialty is not epidemiology or disease surveillance, was escorted out of a news conference by the governor’s communications director in April after saying Floridians may have to practice social distancing and wear masks for up to a year, a prediction at odds with statements from DeSantis and Trump.
Some of his top staff have left the department mid-pandemic.
The administrator of the department’s surveillance section left in March for a job at Pfizer. Rebekah Jones, who had been managing the department’s public-facing data portal, was dismissed in May after a dispute over changes to the dashboard, which she said were designed to hide relevant information. State officials, who accused Jones of “insubordination,” said the changes were aimed at increased accuracy. Scott Pritchard, who headed the department’s investigations unit, left last month. He informed his team he was leaving on the day DeSantis announced plans to reopen schools at “full capacity,” according to people familiar with the matter.
Pritchard, who did not respond to a request for comment, then left the state altogether.

'Government has failed us'
DeSantis has left Florida for the White House numerous times during the pandemic.
At an April briefing in the Oval Office, Trump offered to hold the governor’s foam display boards as DeSantis detailed how Florida had corralled the coronavirus better than almost any other state.
“Everyone in the media was saying Florida was going to be like New York or Italy, and that has not happened,” DeSantis said.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Florida now eclipses New York’s caseload by more than 3,300. Florida has at least 168,000 more cases than Italy, a country with about three times the state’s population.
DeSantis joined Trump for a White House event on drug pricing Friday, when the state recorded 12,444 new cases of the virus and 136 deaths.
DeSantis was a little-known congressman in the first half of the Trump administration who made a name for himself with appearances on Fox News denouncing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
He netted the president’s endorsement in the 2018 Republican gubernatorial primary, riding it all the way to the governor’s office.
“What’s the old phrase — dance with the one who brought you,” said Farmer, the incoming Florida Senate minority leader. “That’s what he’s doing. His political fortune in becoming governor was not just closely tied, but almost exclusively tied, to the Donald Trump train.”
Trump feels bonhomie with DeSantis, likes having him in the Oval Office and regularly speaks with him on the phone, even though many around the president do not trust the governor, people familiar with the matter say. DeSantis also regularly consults with Brad Parscale, the president’s recently deposed campaign manager.
Florida’s initial ability to skirt the worst effects of the virus was a boon for DeSantis and for Trump: The governor’s aggressive efforts to jump-start his economy were right out of Trump’s playbook, perceived at the time as a benefit in the battleground state. Administration officials regularly sent reports and clips of DeSantis bragging about Florida not having cases early in the outbreak, to argue that many states were overreacting and, at times, that seasonal heat could cure the virus.
Now, with the virus spreading uncontrolled in Florida, former health officials think DeSantis has joined the president in seeking to manage expectations about its consequences rather than formulate a plan to bring it under control. 
“They keep hoping it’s going to go away by itself,” said Richard Hopkins, an epidemiologist who spent 19 years at the Florida Department of Health. “I don’t know what’s going on — whether they’re afraid that they will get primaried by someone to their right if they take appropriate public health action.”

Approval of DeSantis’s handling of the pandemic has fallen by double digits since April, when 50 percent of registered voters in Florida backed the governor’s approach. Now, 38 percent of residents approve of his response, while 57 percent disapprove, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday. 
The return this summer to crisis conditions has felt like whiplash for front-line workers.
In June, employees at the six-hospital Memorial Healthcare System based in Hollywood, Fla., thought they had dodged a wave of coronavirus patients that threatened to overwhelm their hospitals.
Exhaling workers began to dismantle surge areas from auditoriums and classrooms that had been converted into treatment areas. But it was premature. By the end of the month, covid-related hospitalizations had begun to soar, said the system’s chief medical officer, Stanley Marks.
“We converted them back,” Marks said. “By early July, we again were in full emergency mode.”
Darlene Dempsey, a nurse in West Palm Beach and a lifelong Republican, said she could no longer support Trump or DeSantis, both of whom, she added, had chosen to “gaslight nurses” instead of using the time in March and April to ramp up production of medical equipment and develop a testing plan.
“The fairy tales about all being under control are nonsense,” she said. “Our government has failed us.”

Another thing I'd like to point out regarding the number of cases in Florida.

There are ZERO tourists from outside the US willing to risk visiting the state. They don't see the same bullshit propaganda that the morons in Florida are gobbling up.

Those foreign tourists aren't going to risk getting on a plane and flying to Disney world or Miami or Tampa when they could possibly get sick and be refused treatment because the hospitals are overwhelmed.

Why would they when they can wait a year? In a year, we can be rid of fat Donnie, the virus can be under control and the plane fares, room rates and rentals will be cheaper. Why wouldn't they wait another year to visit?

That loss of tourist $$$ is also going to depress their economy, hopefully making enough people mad that they vote fat orange out and start pressing deathsantis to pull his head out of his own fat ass.

R146 You are totally incorrect, we have foreign tourists here, how they got here, I don’t know but I’m curious about how they got in. Florida is full of out of state tourists clogging up I75.

Another thing, foreign tourists are not respecting the mask mandate which is infuriating.

Then those tourists deserve to end up in an overcrowded hospital in a tent city.

Dumber than dumb Americans. And that's saying something.

First peak at his gut

Getting bigger!

FATTER THAN TRUMP

R151 Oh my goodness. He's huge. Put down the cookie dough, Gov!

He must be nearing 400

Based on the photo above, this is the next step in his metamorphosis.

He must be miserable all day. It is fucking hell being fat in Florida when you have to step outside into a 100 degree sauna everyday. And Im sure he hasn't seen his dick in a long time.

DeSantis has a dick?

Today he endearingly compared opening the schools to the Navy SEALS killing Bin Laden.

Are the bears going to make a move on him? Or will he take an otter 🦦?

He has biceps of steel and a strong powerful chest. I'd love to ride that belly and run my fingers through his magnificent product ladened hair.

R159 goes to show that there is somebody out there who will find you attractive no matter what you look like.

[quote]strong powerful chest.

I can't believe anybody could find a man attractive when he's too stupid or callous to effectively manage the disease swamping his state.

What's not to love? I would love to straddle his ballooning belly, nurse on his man titties, run my fingers through his coiffed thick hair, and feel those big powerful arms around me.

Is he dead yet? Oh, no, just fat.

What the Hell is Jabba DeSantis eating to gain so much fucking weight so quickly? Is he pregnant with triplets?

I keep thinking of the Harvey Weinstein anecdote where he was scarfing a bowl of M&Ms, and he spilled the bowl on the floor, so he got down and started plucking them off the floor and popping them in his mouth.

He is literally trying to morph into Trump

Ewwwwww r163, get some taste.

He was looking pretty chunky back during the campaign. And what's with his creepy wife--"and Ron is SO much more...."

It’s widely known the wife is Lady Macbething his administration

Miami-Dade Public Schools virtual learning has been targeted by multiple cyber attacks and failures by shitty Comcast. I wonder if Deathsantis even gives a fuck.

This week.

STILL getting bigger

Fat pig.

Judging from the looks of Barr, Pompeo, DeSantis, Christie to Dump himself - these vile, selfish, greedy, sycophants consume literally every in their wake. Hogs is an understatement.

[quote]He is literally trying to morph into Trump

"Single, white female" vibes...

OMG!

LOL he is turning into Poppin Fresh

You can literally see him and Mike Pompey get fatter with each passing second. It’s mesmerizing.

He's hotter than every guy on Growlr who's ever given me the time of day