Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried (D) said in an interview that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis
Ron DeSantis Fundraising Points To Trump-GOP Gaps Poll: 81 Percent Of Republican Voters Have A Positive View Of Trump DeSantis Against Biden: Thought To Fix COVID-19 Restrictions ‘Insane’ MORE lets his “white rich donors” skip the line for COVID-19 vaccines.
“What we see here in our state is the governor playing favoritism on his white, wealthy donors,” Fried said in a Friday. interview with MSNBC.
“What’s happening is that the governor who never had a plan on how the vaccines would be rolled out, so he had this hodgepodge plan in place and let a lot of the white rich donors come forward where all of our minorities and all of our disenfranchised communities are still waiting for the vaccine, ”she added.
Fried’s allegations that DeSantis is playing favoritism with vaccine distribution prompted her to ask the FBI to to investigate the issue at the beginning of March.
The allegations emerged after The Miami Herald reported that nearly all residents 65 and older in a wealthy Key Largo enclave had been vaccinated against COVID-19 in January, and many of those residents donated to DeSantis’ governmental campaign.
While all residents were eligible for the vaccine, Fried believes the community was prioritized because of their connections.
“Some people are more angry with me for vaccinating seniors than other governors whose policies have killed seniors, and that’s a joke,” DeSantis said in response to The Miami Herald’s story.
“I’ve never seen corruption like this,” said Fried. The alleged corruption is why she believes the FBI should be involved.
But DeSantis insisted he was not involved in vaccinating the community mentioned in The Herald’s story.
“That wasn’t a site we were involved with, in the Keys,” said DeSantis. That was one of the hospital systems in South Florida [that] went to this community of seniors. I think that’s great. I want seniors to get photos, I think they got it right. We just weren’t involved in any way, shape or form. “