"It was done with malicious intent and a reckless disregard for the truth"

“We vaccinated now 3.5 million senior citizens,” DeSantis said on FOX News. “We were the first state to say we’re doing seniors first. We’re not going to follow the CDC’s recommendation. What we have done has worked. They didn’t want to discuss that. And obviously, they selectively edited the background. They tried to act like there was a conspiracy with Publix, ignoring the fact that other pharmacies were involved before Publix, doing all our long-term care facilities, ignoring the fact that I met with the county mayor who is a Democrat that said what ’60 Minutes’ has done is bunk. Palm Beach calculated 90% of their seniors live within 1 1/2 miles of a Publix. So when we put it in there, their numbers started going through the roof. So it succeeded there. What they didn’t tell you also, is when there was a need in a more rural part of the county, like near Lake Okeechobee, we set up a separate site in a small town called Pahokee. They didn’t tell you that.”

“They didn’t tell you we were doing African-American church vaccination drives before Publix ever gave a single shot. They didn’t tell you that,” he said. They didn’t tell you that hospitals were doing shots starting in the third week of December because it didn’t fit the narrative.”

“They don’t believe in facts,” DeSantis told Carlson. “It was a political narrative. It was done with malicious intent and a reckless disregard for the truth. They would not talk to the people who were the most relevant to this because they know those key Democrats – Jared Moskowitz, Mayor Dave Kerner – would blow up their narrative. So they just put their head in the sand and pretended like those facts didn’t exist.”