Dem Rep. Shalala: ‘Terrified’ by Lack of Leadership on Pandemic from Trump, DeSantis

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL) said she was “terrified” by the lack of leadership from President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) on the coronavirus pandemic.

Guest Host Martha Raddatz asked, “How bad is the situation in your district and your state in ?”

Shalala said, “It’s terrible. we have community spread, which means the virus is out of control the lack of leadership in the White House and in our governor’s office, they simply have not hit this with a hammer which what we needed to do to starve the virus, they opened too soon and they misunderstand what you need to do or they understand it and they’re not willing to do it. ”

She continued, “Apparently, the president wants to take the COVID-19 money out of the heroes act that we passed in May, which makes no sense at all. But the residents here are terrified. and I’m terrified for the first time in my career, because there’s a lack of leadership and we simply have not gotten our arms around this. Talking about opening schools is ridiculous when you have community spread the way we do here and the superintendent has luckily been very disciplined about what the standards will be for opening schools but the real thing we need to do is we need to close down again. I said four months ago, if we don’t do this right we’re going to have to close down again. That’s the worst nightmare. And we’re going to have to do that in Florida.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.