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March 29, 2023 - The StoneZONE - Roger Stone
57:47
Trump vs. DeSantis, the Early Line - The StoneZONE with Roger Stone
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And now, Lindell TV brings you The Stone Zone, with legendary Republican strategist and political icon, and pundit, Roger Stone.
Stone has served as a senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents.
He is a New York Times best-selling author, and a longtime friend and advisor of President Donald Trump.
As an outspoken libertarian, Stone has appeared on thousands of broadcasts, spoken at countless venues, and lectured before the prestigious Oxford Political Union and the Cambridge Union Society.
Due to his four-plus decades in the political and cultural arena, Stone has become a pop culture icon.
And now, here's your host, Roger Stone!
Welcome.
I'm Roger Stone, and you are about to enter the Stone Zone.
The reason people tune in here every day at 5 o'clock Eastern, 4 o'clock Central, by going to stonezone.live is, generally speaking, their love of politics and political discussion and analysis.
And that is the purpose of our show today.
Now, I'm a strong supporter, in fact, a 43-year friend and advisor to former President Donald Trump.
I make no bones about my support for his renomination and his election.
I was present when he announced his candidacy some weeks ago, but I'm also a political professional, a veteran of 12 national presidential campaigns, starting, of course, with Richard Nixon, three campaigns for Governor Ronald Reagan,
The campaign of that great American Senator Bob Dole, doing a recount service for the Bushes in 1988, pardon me, in 2000.
And then of course, my support for President Donald Trump.
I don't make political calculations or decisions or judgments based on my opinion or my instinct or whim.
I base my decisions on a cold-hearted analysis of data, that's right, polling, but also political dynamics based on a 43-year record of experience in the arena.
Therefore, I think I am able to offer today a dispassionate analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the two men who are, without any question, the leading candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
First of all, let me say that it is a matter of legal fact that Donald J. Trump is the only formally legally announced candidate in the race today.
But those who contact me on Twitter or Truth Social or Gab who say, well, we're not even certain that Governor DeSantis is running, you can take this to the bank.
He will be a candidate for the Republican nomination.
In fact, Florida has, in its current state law, a provision that says that a person cannot hold state office and at the same time pursue federal office.
That means today, technically, it would be illegal for Governor DeSantis to announce and file a candidacy for president.
I expect that this law will be changed by a cooperative Republican state legislature before the end of the next special session, which means I anticipate a formal announcement from Governor DeSantis in May or perhaps as late as June.
Another question that comes up After all, it would be a generational ticket.
is why Trump and DeSantis cannot run together.
After all, it would be a generational ticket, two of the party's strongest candidates.
But the problem here, which I have written about and talked about, but still amazes me how many people don't quite grasp, is that the rules of the current electoral college, while they do not strictly prohibit a party from nominating two candidates from while they do not strictly prohibit a party from nominating two candidates from the same state, it makes Here is why.
If the party nominated a Trump DeSantis ticket and that ticket carried Florida, which it would, Florida's 37 electoral votes would not be counted for the Republican ticket.
That is in a very narrow pathway for any Republican to get elected president, a burden that is too great to pay.
For those who say, well, Donald Trump can just switch his legal residence back to New York or New Jersey, I assure you the former president is not going to switch his legal residence back to a state that has a confiscatory personal income tax program.
Both of those states have exactly that.
Florida, of course, has no state income tax.
It's one of the many reasons why President Donald Trump moved here.
So if you're dreaming about a Trump DeSantis ticket, you can stop dreaming.
Let's also recognize that Governor Ron DeSantis is right now at the absolute peak of his political strength.
The reason for that is that he just spent tens of millions of dollars On a re-election campaign, which allowed him to advertise both inside Florida, but also significantly due to the magic of digital advertising outside of Florida.
In other words, the DeSantis campaign spent their money very wisely on television, cable, radio, and particularly Spanish language radio inside Florida while sponsoring digital advertising
That was ostensibly built around fundraising but seemed to be grouped in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Georgia and other early presidential primary states.
First of all, this is perfectly legal.
It's also very, very smart.
I would also recognize that Ron DeSantis seems to have the asset of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
That means the active blocking and tackling and advocacy of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, among others.
But it is a misnomer to say that Fox TV, Fox Cable, Fox Cable News Network elected Donald Trump in 2016.
That is not the case.
In fact, Fox sought to prop up other candidates.
early in the 2016 process, such as Senator Marco Rubio, such as Senator Ted Cruz, and did so, and of course Jeb Bush, but did so unsuccessfully.
It is really only until Donald Trump ran the tables in terms of caucuses and primaries And that Fox realized that covering Donald Trump brought them incredible ratings, and those incredible ratings allowed them to charge significantly more for their advertising space that they got on the Trump train.
So the idea that Fox was pivotal to Trump's nomination is not really accurate.
Although in the post-nomination period, there's no question that the fair, extensive coverage of the Trump campaign, which was not extended by MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, and so on, was most definitely an asset.
Governor Ron DeSantis will have no shortage of globalist dollars.
He'll have no shortage of establishment Republican money.
Let's be very clear, though, though, that DeSantis' constant insistence on aspects of his record that are in keeping with the America First agenda, recognize that even he, Governor DeSantis, recognizes that the center of gravity within the recognizes that the center of gravity within the grassroots Republican Party has shifted to the America First wing of the party.
In other words, Ron DeSantis is not foolish enough to run as what many people think he is, a Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan establishment Republican.
That is in itself a hat tip to former President Donald Trump and the way he's changed the National Republican Party to being the party of the country club, to being the party of working people.
Assets of President Trump, however, I think are every bit perhaps more persuasive.
First of all, the intensity of Donald Trump's support is quite extraordinary.
In poll after poll, Trump's ratings in the poll demonstrate a loyalty of support, which indicates that Trump's voters are not going to wander.
He is also, as a sitting president, as he just demonstrated in East Palestine, Ohio, a week ago, able to generate news at any time.
And Donald Trump remains a force of nature, a political movement that is greater than the Republican Party.
He has a repository of support within the party and beyond the party that actually make him the strongest contender.
Those who say, such as Paul Ryan, that Donald Trump is the only Republican who cannot win in 2024 are exactly wrong.
He may be the only candidate that can win in 2024.
Now let's talk for a moment about those polls because I think it is a very key point.
There was an extraordinary piece in today's Intelligencer column of New York Magazine, the last place in the world that one expect to find a balanced or accurate political analysis.
But I'm going to read directly from this incredible piece.
Uh, the polls in the 2024 GOP contest show a fairly stable Trump lead over the field.
If DeSantis looked initially like an irresistible force, Trump is now looking more like an immovable object.
The real clear average, uh, uh, polls of various GOP candidates currently place Trump at 45 and DeSantis at 29 with Pence at seven, uh, Haley at five.
With others in low single digits.
Because 2024 polling is a bit scattered at this early stage of the cycle, it's more instructive, and I think more valuable, to compare apples to apples findings within the same pollster using the same methodology over time.
So, for example, the Economist YouGov poll had Trump leading DeSantis in a multi-candidate field, 44-32 in January and 42-32 in February, within the poll's margin of error.
Harvard-Harris poll, which is directed by the enormously capable Dr. Mark Penn, Democrat, showed Trump leading DeSantis 48-25 in December and 42-32 in February.
This, pardon me, that is incorrect.
Let me read that again.
Harvard Harris showed Trump leading DeSantis 48-25 in December, 48-25 in January, and 46-23 in February.
The Emerson poll showed that Trump was up 55-25 in November, 55-29 in January, and 55-25 in February.
There has not been much movement.
Trump remains in a strong and commanding position.
Confusing this picture somewhat are occasional one-on-one test polls between Trump vs. DeSantis.
Most of these polls rely on dubious assumptions and methodology that Trump only won in 2016 because of divided opposition, which DeSantis may be able to avoid.
Actually, that's not true.
Trump got stronger in 2016 as the field shrank.
In any event, one polling outlet shows that DeSantis may actually be moving in the wrong direction.
A Yahoo News YouGov poll shows that after trailing for the last three months, former President Donald Trump has now surged to a substantial lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a two-man matchup for the Republican nomination.
Previously, President Trump led 45-41 among Republicans.
Trump now leads I would argue that the President's highly successful trip to Ohio is a perfect example of Trump's ability to grasp the narrative, control the news cycle, and drive higher levels of support.
What is unmistakably true is that DeSantis is doing a lot better in early polls than many winning candidates have in the past, without having to do much more other than governing his state.
I disagree with that.
The rollout of the governor's book tour has been, from a staff level, flawless, yet it is hard to understand how Governor DeSantis can get a terrific three-page spread on a Sunday from the New York Post, yet the very next day when he appeared in Staten Island only draw a crowd of 139 people.
The truth of the matter is Nate Cohn of the New York Times calculated that DeSantis is performing better in early national presidential primary polls than Reagan in 1980, Biden in 2020, McCain or Barack Obama in 2008, or Mitt Romney McCain or Barack Obama in 2008, or Mitt Romney in 2012.
Here's the problem, Mr. Cohn.
Trump is doing even better than Carter in 1980, Mondale in 1984 or Ford in 1976, all of them the eventual nominee.
This may all come down to be a question of base and whose base is more durable.
One of the issues here is going to be the records of both men.
And that's what we are about to get into.
President Donald Trump has an extraordinarily strong record of fostering the most robust economy in American history with the greatest record of job creation, the greatest record of wage growth, the lowest levels of unemployment against all Americans.
He also presided over energy independence, the lowest gasoline prices in our history.
But more importantly, with the war in Ukraine increasingly becoming a dominating issue, and with an end to the war most definitely not in sight as the war drags into its first year, I still believe that Donald Trump's greatest single asset going into this contest is his foreign policy record.
It is Donald Trump who cut off the Russian pipeline.
It is Donald Trump who supplied lethal weapons to the Ukrainians, which Barack Obama would not do.
It is Donald Trump who fostered a historic peace agreement in the Middle East.
It is Donald Trump who got the North Koreans to the table and actually got them to temporarily halt their nuclear weapons development program.
He has a very solid record on the world stage.
Now we go to the record of Governor Ron DeSantis.
I'm going to argue that every aspect of his record has certain vulnerabilities.
For example, he would tell you that he ended the mask mandates in the state of Florida, but a reading of the small print will show that he abrogated many of those decisions to local counties who flouted the spirit of his executive order.
For he also had an executive order in which he seemed to ban the teaching of critical race theory and other sex and gender lies in the public schools.
But that too is being defied by school districts now across the state in the larger, more liberal counties.
Yet the governor has taken no stand to fire those school board members.
Broward County, where I live, is a perfect example.
Then there is the entire question of Disney.
No, the governor did not end Disney's special taxing district in which essentially they were allowed to set their own tax rates.
But what he did do was abrogate the control of Disney's tax rates to a authority controlled by himself.
He also took a $1 million contribution from Disney for his inauguration.
These are just several of the examples of where I think the governor's record is going to be under scrutiny.
And where I think that there are vulnerabilities that do not exist in Donald Trump's record as president.
Joining us now to talk about some of those discrepancies is a woman who's been on the show before.
Jean Marie Nassar is not a politician.
She's never been in politics before.
She's a private citizen.
She is a researcher.
And she was on the show previously when we discussed Governor DeSantis' appointment of David, uh, pardon me, David Garner, uh, who was the, uh, Palm Beach County, uh, Commissioner, who was, uh, pardon me, David Koerner, pardon me, who was the Palm Beach County Commissioner, uh, appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis to be the head of the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The reason this was, uh, Significant was because of Mr. Kerner's role as the progenitor of the Palm Beach County COVID-19 Compliance Task Force, which essentially was a Gestapo-style operation which terrorized the citizens of Palm Beach, businesses in Palm Beach, and set up a snitch line so you could
You could rat on your neighbors across the street, the McGillicuddies, if they weren't wearing their masks.
And Governor DeSantis and Mr. Kerner very advocately, avidly proposed and pushed the COVID-19 vaccination.
So joining us now, an activist and friend of the show, Jean Marie Nacer joins us now.
Hi, Roger.
I think there's a delay.
Thanks for having me.
I mispronounce your name, Nasser.
I'm delighted to see you again and I thank you for being on the show.
I pointed out in the introductions that You're not a politician.
You're a mom.
You're just an average citizen who was drawn to the public arena by what you saw happening in Palm Beach County.
And on Twitter, as I have noticed, you have emerged as a very articulate and I think very accurate and precise critic of Governor DeSantis.
Specifically, you went into his book where he talks about his handling of the closing of the beaches in the three southern counties.
I know you have some video you brought with you today.
I'm going to let you lay this out for us.
First of all, let me compliment you on your incredible work in exposing David Koerner and who and what he really is.
I'm sorry that we were unsuccessful in convincing the governor not to move forward with Koerner's appointment, but you did great work in that entire issue.
I touched on what Mr. Koerner has done to the people of Palm Beach County, but let's talk about those beaches.
Well, interesting you mention it, Roger.
I was never into politics.
And I started getting into local politics, because our beaches were closed.
And I was a new Florida resident at the time, I had no idea how county government worked.
But I knew it made no sense that our beaches were closed.
And, you know, through social media, I ended up, I didn't know anyone down here, honestly.
We had just moved here not long ago.
And I started to find a group of people who were putting out data in the city that I live, one of the commissioners.
And looking at the data, I think there was like less than one hospitalization per day in each of our hospitals due to COVID at the time that our beaches were shut down.
So that's really what You know, propelled me to even find my way to the County Commission was to ask to have our beaches open.
And I think that the misconception that a lot of people don't realize is, who ordered our beaches closed?
And I'm seeing online, and this is the main reason I got into COVID politics, any politics, was to open our beaches.
So I think since that point, I've been following this and what people don't really understand is that it was Governor DeSantis with his executive order that closed down the beaches in Palm Beach and Broward County.
Now, you know, I don't say anything without backup, so I have those executive orders here.
As you see, I highlight them.
What happened was on March, you know, 16th was 15 days to slow the spread and the White House put out their guidance, you know, that groups of 10 or more were prohibited.
So just stay in groups of 10 or less and social distance.
That was it.
That was the extent of guidance.
And I think what a lot of people are failing to understand and what this last two plus years was about was about turning CDC recommendations into mandate.
And the only people with authority to turn recommendations into mandate is your government official.
So that is the reason why private citizens were affected from edicts from government officials.
And, um, You know, you mentioned the governor's book and I was eager to read it because living in Palm Beach County through this, we were treated very differently and we'll get to those clips in a minute and he admits that he was going to treat us differently.
Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade, the three southern southeast counties.
But what people really don't realize is Who did what, when, where, and why?
And I'm just trying to form those puzzles together.
I knew some of it while it was happening, but now with this book, going back and seeing the relationship between Dave Kerner and Governor DeSantis, you kind of read more into things to try and piece together what was the political atmosphere and who was influencing what.
So, you know, I picked up a copy of the governor's book here, The Courage To Be Free, and I will say, you know, I voted for him, and I'm a supporter of him, but I'm not a supporter of how we were treated during the lockdown, and the mandates, and how these three southern counties were basically watching the free state of Florida, watching our governor,
Well, we were still under harsh mandates or harsh lockdowns.
And we'll get into that.
So, you know, on page 175 of his book, he admits, you know, he talks about the media giving him a hard time for not closing beaches.
And he says, I did not order all beaches to close.
And he goes on to say, the beaches are not a hazard for respiratory viruses and closing them would have just driven people indoors, which was a riskier environment.
So the fact that he says here, you know, beaches are not a hazard for respiratory viruses.
I mean, that's common sense.
But did he have that realization at the time when he decided to close our beaches by his own executive order?
So he decided not to close the rest of the beaches in Florida.
But why then close the beaches of Palm Beach and Broward by your executive order not once, but twice?
Did the virus behave differently on the beaches of Palm Beach County and the beaches of Broward?
You know, I understand these were the areas of had higher cases.
But Either the virus is a rescue at the beach in groups of less than 10, or it's not.
And the fact that he did order our beaches closed, you know, I have his executive order here, which was written on March 20th.
While the rest of the state just had to obey the no gatherings more than 10 on their open beaches, our beaches in Broward and Palm Beach County were closed.
Because it says the minimization of contact is necessary to avoid COVID-19 infection of the residents of the county.
Beaches are potential gathering places for the spread of COVID-19.
So if this was his thought process to write an order to say beaches are the potential gathering places for COVID-19 as a justification to close Palm Beach and Broward beaches, why aren't we hearing about that?
Why aren't we hearing about him doing that?
I mean, what you see right now is you have people who are Twitter influencers, whether they're employed by the governor or the Republican Party of Florida, I don't know.
But they're well-known Twitter accounts.
You know, one says they're the nexus of Florida content, literally saying DeSantis didn't Well, let's let's be factual.
He did, by his own executive order.
Why?
You know, we don't know.
We have more questions than not.
And I think that what was said was that he would be working with the counties and together.
So what you see and what you'll hear Is that, and this had gone on and this was a mass confusion from the staff at the county to the people.
So it's still confusion today.
You have the governor saying it was the county fault for all of this, the shutdowns, the lockdowns and not opening.
And then you have the county saying, well, we need the governor's permission to open because it was his executive order that closed this.
Not only the beaches, but the different phases.
So what essentially was set up, and we'll go to the clips, is that in the very beginning of this pandemic, the governor put together a task force for his reopening plan, the Safe Smart Step-by-Step Reopening Plan.
And on that task force was our county mayor from Palm Beach County, David Kerner, who now Governor DeSantis has hired to a high-level state position.
But while he was mayor of our county, he was also on the task force.
So before our commission was even meeting, he was on this task force for reopening.
And what he did was he asked that our county, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade be given special dispensation to make their own orders, to not follow the governor's reopening plan, like the rest of the state.
So it was Dave Kerner, who in a meeting said it was him who advocated for this as a Democrat mayor.
And Governor DeSantis said, okay.
So you can see from one of his first press conferences on March 19, when the rest of the state opens to phase one, Governor DeSantis exempts Broward, Palm Beach, All right, let's roll that clip.
So if you want to play click one, we can hear from Governor DeSantis about the control over this.
All right, let's roll that clip.
Governor, what does local governments have on restricting for their communities?
So what we did was we accepted Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, and we're going to work constructively with them to get them where they need to go.
And then we put -- these are the state rules.
We didn't specifically preempt local government, but like I told Troy, or actually, was it Troy?
Who asked me that?
You asked me that, yeah.
I think it'd be really hard outside of Southeast Florida, and they're not included, but if they were, you may be able to make an argument in some of these places.
You go to some of these places that have such low rates, where all these main physicians are saying we need to go to Phase 1, to say that these modest steps are somehow not acceptable, that's going against medical judgment, and I don't think that they're going to want to do that.
So, I'm confident that this will be a good roadmap.
I want to get Southeast Florida on the board.
And I want to be able to get them in a situation.
They're close.
And I'll tell you, the leadership, they've done great, great leadership.
The administrators in Broward, Palm Beach, the mayors, Mayor Jimenez, we work very closely together.
He's had a lot on his plate.
I mean, he's effectively like a governor in many ways because they got almost 3 million people there.
That's bigger than a lot of states in the Plains.
And so we're doing that.
I think we're going to be able to get them there relatively soon, but that's going to be a collaborative process.
And I think we're better when we do bottom up, when we work together.
I think that's probably the best way.
But Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach are very important to Florida's future.
They were all doing so well before this happened.
You drive in Miami, you couldn't move 10 feet without seeing a crane somewhere.
I mean, it was unbelievable.
You look at all the business that was going into Broward.
We had the Spirit Airlines, all these other great things.
Of course, Palm Beach has a lot to offer.
We're seeing huge amounts of wealth going down there.
So we want to get them going.
I think we have a good path to do it, but it's going to be on a little bit different timetable than the rest of the state.
You write in your Twitter that the governor said, "Beaches are not a hazard for respiratory viruses.
Closing them would just drive people indoors, which is riskier." Yeah, so I mean he writes that sentence in his book where we don't know the time frame that he's talking about specifically in his book on page 175, you know, but he's admitting in his book beaches are not a hazard for respiratory viruses.
And there was a political article that came out around that time about DeSantis exempting these three counties.
And he's basically saying, we're going to do what these Democrat counties want to do.
And so he did.
And there was nothing forcing him.
I mean, I think this whole beach, the reason why I got, you know, out there fact checking people was because President Trump put out a true social that DeSantis closed the beaches.
And there was a whole Twitter flurry of DeSantis attack dogs, you know, saying he didn't close the beaches.
I mean, maybe they would like you to believe that.
And the sad part is much of what was done to the residents of Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade is not being talked about.
So you can, you know, say we were free. - Yeah.
But you can't exclude the counties that were not free and just not talk about them because we were not free.
I mean, I have two executive orders by him, by our governor shutting down with his own authority.
It was his authority.
He could have just said like the rest of the state, we could just stay in groups of 10.
But he writes that beaches are a potential gathering place for the spread of COVID and to minimize contact necessary with COVID.
So did you believe that COVID could spread on the beaches in Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade, and not the rest of the state?
Or did you just do what the Democrat mayors wanted you to do?
And if you bent the knee to the Democrat mayors, and it wasn't in your conviction that you You know, if he had a conviction that beaches were safe, that he didn't want to close them for the rest of the state, then why didn't he stand up to that conviction and tell the Democrat mayors, no, I'm not writing this order for you.
And I mean, this is about the courage to be free.
So we were not free.
And if you have courage and you stand in your convictions that the beaches are safe, then why did you close them?
You also write on your Twitter feed, quoting Governor DeSantis, by guaranteeing that individuals could not be fined for violating edicts like mask mandates, we set the stage.
He writes that in December of 2021.
However, mask mandates in South Florida still existed.
With the threat of police trespass and tickets until February 14, 2022.
It's yet another example of the record not matching the rhetoric.
Yeah, well, not only that, additionally, in his book, he writes on page 177 on mask mandates.
Early on, he says, I was skeptical that masks would provide protection that the public health establishment claimed.
But I was adamant that a mask mandate was not an appropriate use of government power.
I rejected imposing a mask mandate.
So if he was so adamant, as the executive officer of our state, that a mask mandate was not an appropriate use of government power, then why were counties Like Southeast Florida, Broward, Palm Beach, able to get away with mask mandates for so long in an era where everything was an executive order under a state of emergency, why did he not issue his own executive order prohibiting them?
The other thing about the mask issue is these county governments, I mean, he did attempt to Nullify them, the county government orders in May 3rd, 2021.
And the county that same next day wouldn't even recognize his executive order and banned maskless citizens from entering a public meeting on March, I'm sorry, May 4th, 2021.
And then there was no policy in place.
The county administrator wrote her own policy.
It was an executive order.
And that was in effect until February 2022.
And the thing about the mask mandate are that last one that was written by the county administrator.
She did not even get direction from the board, the governing board to do it.
And he's aware of that.
And my son was denied entry.
You know, he was denied a medical exemption, which he has.
They didn't honor medical exemptions.
He was denied entry to the library on the last day of January 2022.
So essentially a year ago, over a month.
And the governor's aware, his team was aware, I was told they were handling it, and then they stopped communicating.
And I was told a certain date that something would happen, and that date came and went.
And the county eventually sunsetted that order.
So what happened or did not happen, I was not communicated that the governor ever stepped in on that.
It's just the fact that he's saying right here in his book that I was adamant that a mask mandate was not the appropriate use of government power, then why were these counties under mask mandates for so long?
After that incident last year in 2022, in February, when my son was denied entry to the library, I reached out to the governor's office and asked him, let's meet about this.
Because at the time there was a law against mask mandates in schools, but children who are homeschooled or want to go to the library were not protected.
I wrote to his staff through the, you know, the website to me, and I said, let's look at legislation to prevent this from happening again.
Why are schoolchildren in schools protected when homeschool children aren't?
And, you know, I was not obviously granted that request, but then now, magically, this legislative session, we're promised that there's going to be some mask mandate ban bill coming out.
Greater protection!
Three years later!
When we needed these, where was he?
I'll tell you what he was comfortable doing.
I mean, what struck me the most in his book is on page 173 and 174, he writes about how he speaks to these professional sports players and presidents.
And he basically says, I will have no problem overruling any county or local politician.
So it struck me that he seemed to be bragging in his book that he would go to bat for professional sports and overrule county mayors when Floridians didn't get that same governor standing up for them.
You know, here on page 173, he writes about the ultimate fighting championship president, you know, wanting to come here.
And for UFC fights, and he, the president of UFC says, Yeah, but I don't want to deal with some jackass mayor.
And governor is quoted writing, Oh, no, don't worry about that.
I replied, I will overrule any mayor that gives you guys a hard time.
Where was that privilege?
Where was that tenacity?
When children?
I mean, We're being denied entry to school over masks.
I mean, he did not overrule our mayor.
He promoted him.
I mean, this went on, mask mandates for years.
And not only that, we had our playgrounds closed in Palm Beach County for five months.
And where was the governor on that?
I mean, it's great, you know, professional sports.
I guess people like to sit around and watch TV, but what about the children of our future who had their playgrounds closed for five months?
And I understand the governor didn't do that, but if he, like he said in that video, was working together with the county, then why didn't he do anything about it?
I'll tell you, he did do something about it.
Because by August, I had written him and his staff a scathing email saying, how can you open professional sports and youth sports, but children who can't participate in either can't play on playgrounds?
The next day, the playgrounds were open, and I got the message that it was because of me, directly from the governor's staff.
So he forced their hand in certain instances, and laid back in others.
So you can see, you know, many times he's saying they're working together.
So this just set up this whole good cop, bad cop, because we're working together.
I'll blame you for this.
You blame me for that.
Nobody will know who is really responsible.
So if you if you look at the another clip that I sent you, you will see on clip three, you know, our county mayor at the time, David Kerner, talks about how he advocated
To get his own authority and not follow the governor's reopening plan and what that really set Palm Beach County up for in terms of prolonged mandates and lockdowns, I'll speak about after the clip if you want to run that.
Let's run the next clip.
So we are accepting Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, but that is not -- we consulted with them on this.
This is kind of the direction they want to go.
They just did a big announcement.
I think yesterday was the day where their parks and marinas and golf courses were open.
They were the only ones that didn't have a lot of that open.
We had a lot of people... I mean, they've had golf.
They've been doing boating and stuff.
And I'm not seeing any outbreaks tied to playing golf.
I think it was the right decision to give people outlets and give them the ability to do some of those things.
So we left them out.
The rest applies statewide.
Because of the numbers in all these other places, I'd find it hard that a local government could go against the advice of the best doctors in the state of Florida.
When I'm sitting there at Cleveland Clinic, when I'm sitting there at Orlando Health, when I'm there at Tampa General, And all these renowned physicians are saying, we've passed the peak.
We're ready for the next step.
To have some local official do it, you're going against medical judgment.
You're going against what would be good for the economy.
You're going against freedom from your kids.
So I don't think that's going to happen.
So we just did it and we'll see how it works.
But I'm pretty confident that we'll be able to stick.
Yes, sir.
There's one more clip I want you to play, but as you can see, I'm just going to tee it up.
He's saying, you know, I'll let the local government do what they want.
But how here he is, you know, he's the executive of our state.
He has access to all of these experts, these medical experts that he's consulting with, you know, bravo to him.
Absolutely.
That's great.
But then he's allowing these local county governments who don't have that access To make their own decisions and deviate from his plan.
And so what essentially happened was, you know, the governor had these metrics, but they were not followed in Palm Beach County.
So he gave permission to Dave Kerner, who asked for it, to not do the reopening plan, but there was no backup plan.
There were no goals in place.
We were set up for failure from the start.
Because he said, Governor DeSantis said, yeah, you don't have to follow my plan.
Go ahead, do your own thing.
But the county never set goals, never stated goals like this plan.
You had nothing but changing goals that were stated in their executive order.
So to open phase one, They kind of stayed with these goals, but then you just see no mention of goals.
You just see our metrics were this.
No explicit, we met these benchmarks.
So if you go to page nine of the governor's reopening plan, and he talks about that, and I think there's three specific metrics that you can meet to open.
And in his book, you know, Governor DeSantis talks about zero COVID, you know, and he on page 177, and he says, what is, what is more, the purpose of mitigation was to prevent hospital capacity, to preserve hospital capacity, not to achieve zero COVID, which was impossible.
So where we were in Palm Beach County, where the local control was given by Governor DeSantis, To our county, they didn't make up their own goals.
They just kept changing them.
And who kept changing them was our State Department of Health doctor.
So that was a state employee.
And every meeting, she would present almost different positivity metrics, different goals.
The goalposts kept changing to the point that I even emailed the governor.
I emailed Dr. Rivke, our State Surgeon General at the time, and I said, why are these goalposts moving?
Where is Dr. Alonzo getting this 5% goal?
Last time it was 10%.
None of this is in the governor's plan.
I reached out to the state epidemiologist working for the Department of Health to say to her, where is our county health director getting these goals?
She couldn't find them.
We were literally under bogus, made up goals on the fly as we were going.
So Governor DeSantis You'll hear him and I have a clip of it.
You know, he was fighting Fauci at the top and the local governments at the bottom, but he's the one who allowed this framework without his authority as executive of our state, granting these local county governments the ability to do what they want and deviate from his reopening plan and not have any concrete metrics And then had metrics that kept changing.
The bar kept always moving.
We had our own Floridian Dr. Fauci in Palm Beach.
And I'm not the only one who will say that.
You can ask any parent whose kids were masked in school.
They will know.
They will know we had our own Dr. Fauci who worked for the State Department of Health here.
And nothing was done.
The goalposts were moving.
They deviated the governor's plan.
And there was really no goal to open on.
And if you want to play the clip of it, I think it's a corner.
You can hear how he wielded this power from the governor.
See if we can get pull up that clip.
I asked that our county be given special dispensation to open our own economy on our own terms.
I didn't want us to be subjected to the broader overall... Well then why didn't it happen?
It did happen.
And now we have all the power.
We just have to consult with the governor.
Well, we always had the power.
No, that's not true.
Well, as of yesterday, we had the power.
Yeah, so his phase one just started yesterday.
What I asked for, as a member of the task force, not in a press briefing, not in a press conference, and I know that you watch the task force, That there needs to be special attention paid to the three southern counties.
And that we ought to have special dispensation to create and manage our own opening because we have such high concern.
That doesn't mean that we have to put the brakes on fully.
That means I want our local leaders making those decisions.
Because we are far different than the rest of the state.
And there's nothing in that order suggests that we delegated our authority away to any other body.
And I wanted to clarify that.
Okay.
I'm not going to continue to argue.
I think the results speak for themselves.
We are legally part of that three-county pact.
It's not a pact.
The effect is that the county commissions of those three counties can write their own orders.
Well, I hope we'll do that.
That's what I've asked for.
Of course we're going to do that.
I think we have the gist of that.
I've seen a lot of weasels in American politics.
That's about the worst one.
You want to go ahead and talk about that for us?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's just what I've been saying.
I mean, that was the moment where Dave Kerner, as a member of Dantz's task force for reopening, took Palm Beach County, Broward, and Dade into their own hands for reopening.
And the governor said, okay, And you saw Governor DeSantis in those previous clips saying, you know, I'm the governor, I have access to the Cleveland Clinic, I have access to the best doctor.
But look who DeSantis allowed the counties to pull away, and who was their advisor?
Our county health director, who kept moving the goalposts on goals that were not even in the governor's plan.
So if you look at, there's one more clip with Chris, playing clip four, Interviewing a former County Commissioner Weinroth, who was on the commission at the time, saying who they had to listen to for reopening.
If you could play that clip for us.
Let's roll that.
So you can't really say you didn't have all the information because we gave it to you and then you kind of laughed.
People laughed us off that we were crazy.
Can you say that we were right?
No.
Well, I can say this.
We had information that was being given to us by the Florida Department of Health.
Alina Alonso, who was of course our representative in that domain, and we had to rely upon experts to help us.
So, yes, there were people out there saying, open the doors, let us out, and I understand today, in hindsight, you can say, you were right and I was wrong.
Can you say that?
I was right and you were wrong?
Okay!
Hey, a lot of times this is all that some people are asking for, right?
For, hey, Great clip of our friend Chris Nelson.
I think that that makes a point in spades.
We're going to have to wrap this up.
Jean-Marie, I want to thank you for coming on The Stone Zone.
You have done a very good job of making your case using the actual documents, using the words from the governor's own book.
In June, the law that Governor DeSantis signed, which essentially gave legal immunity to healthcare providers, including hospitals and doctors, who gave protocols to people in Florida, such as Remdesivir, such as ventilators,
The same doctors who insisted that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were ineffective, their legal immunity will end.
Now, it is not retrospective, but the key question will be whether the governor re-signs and renews this law, or whether he allows it to expire.
To my opinion, this will be a flashpoint We are literally out of time, so I thank you very much, Jean-Marie, for joining us and for an excellent presentation.
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