DeSantis, like E.T., must go home – at all costs

Phone home, governor. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is more lost than the extraterrestrial in “E.T.,” the classic1982 Steven Spielberg blockbuster film. Yes, I’m dating myself.

In the film, E.T. desperately tries to reconnect with his kind to find his way back to his people. Unfortunately, DeSantis is making no effort to reconnect with humanity. In fact, he’s moving farther and farther away from his constituents and reality.

While the omicron variant spread faster in Florida than a California wildfire, DeSantis was nowhere to be found. Prior to New Year’s Eve, the governor had not made a public appearance in nearly two weeks, outside of a Fox News spot. The last time he held a news conference was on Dec. 17, the Friday before the week of Christmas.

This left Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and network hosts at MSNBC to ask where DeSantis was during the omicron COVID-19 surge. They weren’t the only ones. Lots of us were wondering the same.

In the time our governor has been hiding under a rock, Florida has gone from a state with some of the least community spread to one the worst.

With long virus testing lines reemerging across the state and record-breaking levels of new cases over the last three weeks, people are screaming for the Republican governor to confront the pandemic, but don’t count on it. Instead, depend on his sticking to the Republican playbook – deny, lie, spin.

On New Year’s Eve, DeSantis and his wife surfaced at a Christian concert at Miami Baptist Church in West Kendall where he touted the state’s “freedom” amid the raging pandemic.

“I wish all of you a Happy New Year … I’m glad we’re going to be able to celebrate the new year in the freest state of the United States,” he said. “We stood up for your freedom, we stood up for your rights … we’re not going to let government take away the rights that are the gift from God, not from government.”

DeSantis is part of an alternate universe where people like Christian singer Sean Feucht lives. He’s the guy who planned the New Year’s Eve shindig the governor attended, which launched a planned 2022 tour Feucht announced in early December, 2021. Feucht is the founder of the Let Us Worship movement.

“We’ve been gathering together despite pandemics and persecution and fear and crazy, tyrannical governors like we have here in California. We’ve been gathering together and worshiping,” Feucht recently said in an interview with Fox News.

No doubt, faith plays an important role in people’s lives and will continue to help millions get through the pandemic with hope for a brighter future, but science and common sense must prevail.

Preaching to the faithful against vaccines and flouting COVID safety rules is unconscionable. Further, I propose to these false prophets that there is a cold place in hell waiting for them for twisting minds and leading people to their COVID deaths.

DeSantis has proven he is part of this COVID cult and he’s been busy seeking recruits while spending $3 million of taxpayer money in 2021 flying around to campaign in a plane intended for public business. He will tell you he was conducting state business, but we know better.

Polls show DeSantis leading all Democratic candidates in the gubernatorial race with Election Day less than a year away. But Fried, one of his opponents, reminded MSNBC viewers that DeSantis beat the 2018 Democratic nominee, Andrew Gillum, by less than half a percentage point.

“That is really the question that people should be asking every single day and especially at the ballot box in 2022,” Fried said. “Who do you want to be your next governor? Do you want somebody who’s going to dance around the issues, put your personal safety at risk, or somebody who is going to have the booster, have it in public, be out there every day, encouraging people to take the safety measures, get the vaccine, listen to the CDC and make sure that you’re protecting your loved ones and your community members?”

Welcome to 2022, my fellow Florida citizens. Because there is no hope DeSantis will display a shred of needed leadership, prepare to deny him a second term and send him packing to his alien world so the rest of us can live in reality.

Emily Cardenas is the executive editor of The Miami Times. She previously worked as a producer at WTXF in Philadelphia and at WSCV, WFOR and WPLG in Miami.