CBS News this weekend aired what may be the most egregious political hit job since Dan Rather went on-air with forgeries of former President George W. Bush’s National Guard service record.
On Sunday, 60 Minutes promoted a loony left-wing conspiracy theory alleging Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, rewarded a local grocery chain’s political contributions with an exclusive deal to distribute coronavirus vaccines.
This narrative, born in left-wing fever swamps and now elevated by CBS, is not just misleading or somewhat dishonest but a deliberate, outright lie.
And don’t take my word for it. Even Florida Democrats are saying as much.
“Campaign finance reports obtained by 60 Minutes show that weeks before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a partnership with Publix grocery stores to distribute the vaccine in its pharmacies, Publix donated $100,000 to his PAC,” 60 Minutes reported this weekend.
As a brief aside: “Obtained” is a curious word choice. It gives the impression CBS journalists unearthed confidential documents when, in fact, their reporting is based entirely on publicly available data that you or I can “obtain” in a web browser at any time.
In the 60 Minutes segment that aired this weekend, CBS News’s Sharyn Alfonsi tells DeSantis, “Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign, and then you rewarded them with the exclusive rights to distribute the vaccination in Palm Beach.”
The popular grocery store chain donated $25,000 to the Friends of DeSantis political committee on Nov. 13, 2019, and again on Jan. 28, 2020. Later, between Dec. 7-Dec. 31, 2020, it donated a total of $100,000 to the committee. Then, in January 2021, DeSantis announced the state had paired with Publix to make vaccines available to the public.
“How is that not pay for play?” Alfonsi asked the governor this weekend.
“What you’re saying is wrong,” DeSantis answered. “It’s wrong. It’s a fake narrative.”
That’s all CBS showed of his response — a straight denial with no substantive explanation.
However, there’s more to the story. DeSantis actually offered a detailed, clear-eyed explanation for Publix’s involvement in vaccinating Floridians, which was left on the cutting room floor. Meanwhile, relevant facts regarding Florida’s vaccine program were omitted from CBS’s report, as were denials of this bogus conspiracy theory by even state Democrats.
There’s a reason why trust in the press has sunk to an all-time low.
First, here’s a transcript of DeSantis’s complete response to Alfonsi, which 60 Minutes declined to broadcast this weekend:
Sharyn Alfonsi: The criticism is that it’s pay-to-play, governor.
Ron DeSantis: And it’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s a fake narrative. I just disabused you of the narrative. And you don’t care about the facts. Because, obviously, I laid it out for you in a way that is irrefutable.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Well, I — I was just —
Ron DeSantis: And so, it’s clearly not.
As you can see, CBS whittled down the governor’s detailed response into an empty, 11-word denial. But the description above suggests there was no exclusive deal, among other things, yet 60 Minutes declined even to mention that CVS and Walgreens were given the vaccine first.
60 Minutes declined also to mention that Walmart was likewise enlisted to help deliver vaccines to the public. 60 Minutes also managed to omit the rather pertinent detail that Publix played a large role in the second phase of vaccine distribution because it was the first grocery chain that was ready to do so.
It must have slipped their minds over there at CBS News!
For the record, Publix, which told 60 Minutes there is no connection between its political contributions and its vaccine deal with the state, is the most popular grocery store in Florida. It has more than 800 locations, each equipped with a pharmacy. It also boasts seven distribution centers and eight manufacturing facilities in the Sunshine State. In other words, DeSantis would be an idiot not to get Publix involved.
While we’re on the topic of Publix, it’s important to discuss those campaign contributions. It is true the grocer donated $100,000 to DeSantis. It also donated roughly $1 million dollars to the Urban League, a liberal group. Earlier, in 2018, Publix gave an estimated $100,000 to various Democratic Florida campaigns.
Speaking of Democrats, it’s worth mentioning that, after the 60 Minutes episode aired, the director of Florida’s Division of Emergency, a self-described “progressive,” publicly disputed the narrative endorsed by CBS.
“I said this before and I’ll say it again,” said Jared Moskowitz, a three-term Democratic state legislator who has worked in the past for former Vice President Al Gore, former Sen. Joe Lieberman, and former President Barack Obama. “Publix was recommended by FLSERT [State Emergency Response Team] and HealthyFla [Florida Department of Health] as the other pharmacies were not ready to start. Period! Full Stop!”
He added, “No one from the governor’s office suggested Publix. It’s just absolute malarkey.”
Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner, also a Democrat, likewise condemned CBS’s reporting.
“The reporting was not just based on bad information – it was intentionally false,” he said in a statement. “I know this because I offered to provide my insight into Palm Beach County’s vaccination efforts and 60 Minutes declined. They know that the governor came to Palm Beach County and met with me and the County Administrator and we asked to expand the state’s partnership with Publix to Palm Beach County.”
It adds, “We also discussed our own local plans to expand mass vaccinations center throughout the county, which the Governor has been incredibly supportive. We asked and he delivered. They had that information, and they left it out because it kneecaps their narrative. … [Media] are hellbent on dividing us for cheap views and clicks. 60 Minutes should be ashamed.”
CBS’s hit job this weekend is merely an extension of the press’s broader crusade to find fault in Florida’s COVID-19 response. Something — anything! — to dismiss or undercut data showing the Republican-led state has done better than so many Democratic-governed states whose efforts to contain the virus have been met with disastrous results.
Look, it clearly infuriates certain members of the press that DeSantis is the leader they once falsely claimed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to be. Florida’s chief executive is competent, clever, and, most importantly, a coronavirus pandemic success story. He is the polar opposite of Cuomo, the corrupt, incompetent, one-time media darling whose state has the second-highest overall COVID-19 death toll and the second-highest per-capita death rate.
Florida ranks 27th with its per-capita COVID-19 death rate. This is impressive in its own right, but doubly so considering Florida has remained mostly open for the pandemic and that, unlike many other states, it has a disproportionately high population of seniors — the fourth-highest share in the country, to be exact.
DeSantis is doing his job, and he’s doing it well. This enrages some in the press, who clearly see Florida’s governor as a political threat. DeSantis’s success enrages these journalists so much that they’ve resorted to elevating anti-DeSantis loons and cranks. They’ve resorted to outright smear jobs, just like the one CBS pushed this weekend.
It’s almost enough to make you think the presidency is in DeSantis’s future.
