Earlier this week, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” deceptively edited a heated back-and-forth between one of its correspondents and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, all to fit a false narrative that was so bad, even democrats are speaking out on his behalf. Of course, CBS, never one to tell the truth, is doubling down on their edit […]
Earlier this week, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” deceptively edited a heated back-and-forth between one of its correspondents and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, all to fit a false narrative that was so bad, even democrats are speaking out on his behalf.
Of course, CBS, never one to tell the truth, is doubling down on their edit and lies, claiming their decision to take out comments by DeSantis was not nefarious.
Here is a transcript of the edited clip, featuring CBS correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi.
“Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign, and then you rewarded them with the exclusive rights to distribute the vaccination in Palm Beach,” Alfonsi said.
“First of all, what you’re saying is wrong,” DeSantis replied. “That’s a fake narrative. I met with the county mayor, I met with the administrator, I met with all the folks at Palm Beach County and I said, ‘here’s some of the options. We can do more drive through sites, we can give more to hospitals, we can do the Publix,’ and they said ‘we think that would be the easiest thing for our residents.'”
Alfonsi then narrated that Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay claimed DeSantis “never met with her about the Publix deal.”
“The criticism is that it’s pay to play, governor,” Alfonsi said.
“It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s a fake narrative,” DeSantis shot back. ”I just disabused you of the narrative. And you don't care about the facts. Because, obviously, I laid it out for you in a way that is irrefutable."
But, CBS conveniently cut out several minutes of the governor giving a detailed explanation on what led to the deal with Publix.
“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. 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,” DeSantis told Alfonsi in the unedited clip. “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.”
“So yes, you had the counties, you had some drive-thru sites, you had hospitals that were doing a lot, but we wanted to get it into communities more. So we reached out to other retail pharmacies: Publix, Walmart, obviously CVS and Walgreens had to finish that mission and we said we’re going to use you as soon as we’re done with that,” he continued.
“For the Publix, they were the first one to raise their hand saying they were ready to go, and you know what, we did it on a trial basis, I had three counties, I actually showed up that weekend and talked to seniors across four different Publix, ‘how was the experience, is this good, do you think this is the way to go?’ And it was 100 percent positive so we expanded it, and then folks liked it.”
DeSantis later added that while Palm Beach County initially "struggled" with its distribution among seniors, he noted that nearly "75 percent" of seniors had been vaccinated, as well as that vaccine distribution was "expanding" with CVS and Walgreens following their long-term care mission.
Even Publix debunked the narrative, calling it “absolutely false and offensive.”
“The irresponsible suggestion that there was a connection between campaign contributions made to Governor DeSantis and our willingness to join other pharmacies in support of the state’s vaccine distribution efforts is absolutely false and offensive. We are proud of our pharmacy associates for administering more than 1.5 million doses of vaccine to date and for joining other retailers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia to do our part to help our communities emerge from the pandemic, a Publix spokesperson told Fox News.
