Instead of airing his complete interview with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, CBS cut out portions of DeSantis' statements to make him appear stupid, as well as to tee up a false narrative that he engaged in a "pay for play" scheme concerning the mass distribution of Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) injections.
The accusation was made that DeSantis gave preferential treatment to the Publix grocery store chain to be the sole distributor of Chinese virus syringes in Palm Beach because of the company's contributions to his campaign. DeSantis denied this and offered an explanation, but "60 Minutes" cut his explanation from the final show.
What viewers ended up seeing was a babbling DeSantis apparently making excuses rather than explaining that Publix was simply the first to volunteer, with the approval of local officials in Palm Beach.
"First of all, the first pharmacies that had [the vaccine] were CVS and Walgreens and they had a long-term care mission, so they were going to the long-term care facilities," DeSantis told "60 Minutes" during a portion of the interview that was removed.
"They got the vaccine in the middle of December, they started going to the long-term care facilities the third week in December to do LTCs. So that was their mission, that was very important and we trusted them to do that. As we got into January, we wanted to expand the distribution points."
DeSantis went on to talk about how various counties across Florida had set up "drive-thru sites," but that this was not enough to mass vaccinate people as quickly as we desired.
"We wanted to get it into more communities," DeSantis revealed about the agenda, hence why the state partnered up with Publix.
According to DeSantis, Publix, which aggressively fought against Florida's medical cannabis program back in 2016, by the way, was "the first one to raise their hand" as a corporate volunteer to mass distribute Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) injections to Floridians.
It is as simple as that, DeSantis insists, but this is not what "60 Minutes" viewers were told. Instead, they were shown bits and pieces of DeSantis' interview that made him look irate. Not only that, but the interview was carefully parsed and reassembled to make DeSantis appear as though he did not even want to answer Alfonsi's aggressive questioning.
"This is why 'bias' is wrong framework for what's wrong with journalism," tweeted Omri Ceren.
"Bias is when a reporter does a story about something that happened but lets personal views color the reporting. This is being paid to produce content for a partisan agenda, cherry picking topics & details."
Even the leftist mayor of Palm Beach County, Dave Kerner, agreed that "60 Minutes" failed to accurately report information about what actually took place. He wrote that CBS' reporting "was not just based on bad information – it was intentionally false."
Kerner says he challenged "60 Minutes" to let him refute its "half-cooked conspiracy theory" about DeSantis. The program and network declined, though.
"Florida's performance makes what the Democrats did look really bad, and they can't have that because it threatens their pay to play deals with nursing homes, hospitals, and others," speculated one Zero Hedge commenter as to why DeSantis is now under attack.
"I think 60 Minutes should personally call and apologize to all 11 of their viewers," joked another.
To keep up with the latest Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine hysteria, check out ChemicalViolence.com.
Sources for this article include: