Democrats walk out on confirmation hearing for Florida’s surgeon general, call him ‘unqualified’

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Florida Democrats and their stalwart media allies joined forces to try and derail the confirmation of Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, a black man with an MD and PhD from Harvard University, because of his dissenting views on COVID.

Though Ladapo was already appointed to his post back in September by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, Florida law requires that the surgeon general eventually be confirmed by the Florida Senate.

Yet during the confirmation hearing Wednesday, state Democrats jumped through hoops to try and disqualify him with gotcha’ questions. And then when he failed to answer in the way they liked, they staged a walkout.

Watch:

At one point prior to the walkout, a state senator asked, “Do the vaccines work against preventing Covid-19? Yes or no?”

In response to this line of questioning, Ladapo said, “Yes or no questions are not that easy to find in science.”

He was likely alluding to the fact that the coronavirus vaccine doesn’t stop one from contracting or spreading the virus but does drastically reduce one’s chances of being hospitalized and dying from the virus.

And indeed, when the senator repeated the question, Ladapo replied, “The most commonly used vaccines in the United States have been shown to have relatively high effectiveness for the prevention of hospitalization and death, and over time, relatively low protection from infection.”

But this answer angered Democrats and their media allies.

“He’s masterful at dodging questions, insulting the intelligence of Floridians and avoiding straight talk about the need to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” the editorial board of the Sun-Sentinel wrote immediately following the hearing.

Gov. DeSantis’ administration disagrees with this line of thinking, because they believe those with natural immunity and those who are young and healthy do not necessarily “need to be vaccinated” — or, rather, compelled into getting vaccinated.

The board also slammed Ladapo for refusing to be bullied into masking up around a Democrat state senator.

“Ladapo did not express regret for refusing to wear a mask while visiting the Capitol office of Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, a cancer patient who asked him to mask up,” the board grumbled.

The whole post contained nothing but criticism, in addition to accusations that Ladapo is nothing more than DeSantis’ tool.

“‘I’m married to data,’ Ladapo told senators. The reality is that he’s married to DeSantis’ agenda to politicize this pandemic,” the board concluded.

“The doctor does not deserve to be confirmed as surgeon general, especially now that he has shown that he has so little respect for the people of Florida that he wouldn’t give them straight answers.”

The piece hasn’t been well-received on Twitter, where critics have argued, among other things, that the board members are talking an extraordinary amount of trash for professional opinion writers with no medical experience.

Particularly professional opinion writers those opinions always parallel the policy positions of the Democrat Party.

Criticism has also been raised over the claim that it’s DeSantis and his officials, including Ladapo, who have “so little respect for the people of Florida.”

Critics have noted that it’s the board’s preferred party, the Democrat Party, that has pushed for mask and vaccine mandates and then ignored — and sometimes even demonized — dissidents of such mandates, particularly parents.

In fact, the board has, it would appear, at times joined in this demonization. After a group of mothers showed up at a Broward County School Board  hearing in October, for instance, the board wrote negatively about them.

“Follow the science. Those have been the watchwords since the start of this pandemic, though some groups have supplanted it with another phrase: ‘I did my own research,'” the Sun-Sentinel board wrote.

“That phrase — shorthand for the anti-intellectualism and distrust of real expertise that has come to define our age — was heard several times at a Broward School Board meeting Tuesday from members of the Broward chapter of the anti-masking group Moms for Liberty.”

Apparently, it’s a form of “anti-intellectualism” to think critically, especially when dealing with matters concerning one’s own children …

Who knew?

Dovetailing back to the hearing, despite the Democrats’ best efforts, Ladapo was eventually confirmed by the senate’s Republicans:

Vivek Saxena

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