Sunshine Sentinel

As Joe Biden travels to Florida on Tuesday, here are three critical questions that he should be asked.

How can Florida’s hospitality industry survive a Biden national shutdown?

As the Wall Street Journal correctly noted, Joe Biden is the “shutdown” candidate. When ABC’s David Muir pressed Biden on the issue of a national shutdown, Biden was, for once, crystal clear in his response: “I would shut it down.” Florida’s economy absolutely cannot handle another shutdown. In the spring, at the time of the most stringent lockdown measures, the key tourism industry of Florida was losing $1 Billion every single week, according to the US Travel Association.  That kind of economic carnage cannot be revisited. Instead, the Sunshine State represents a model for the rest of America on how to reopen aggressively and safely. Thanks to the strong leadership of Governor DeSantis, life in Florida largely returns to normal, and the economic benefits are tangible and substantial. 

But with Joe Biden in the White House, the shutdown threat would hang over our society like the Sword of Damocles. The national damage from another shutdown would be catastrophic everywhere, but especially so in tourism-heavy Florida. Thankfully, President Trump takes precisely the opposite approach. Even after contracting the virus himself, he insists that we must not live in fear, we must not let the virus dominate our lives. The risks are real and the China Virus should be taken seriously, but we can mitigate risks sensibly and American medicine continues to excel at treatments and therapeutics. President Trump emphatically declares that there will be no shutdowns -- not for Florida, not for anywhere in America.   

Why does Joe Biden coddle Latin American dictators?

Joe Biden represents a retreat backward to the policies of his administration that normalized the brutal military dictatorship of Cuba. That junta, in turn, also supports the thuggish tyranny of Maduro in Venezuela. In a recent interview with CBS News, Biden affirmed that “in large part, I would go back” to the policies of recognizing the Havana regime.

But for Floridians of Cuban and Venezuelan descent know all too well the evil of the governments of their ancestral homelands. Biden’s insistence on normalizing these dictatorial powers presents a big hurdle for Biden in Florida. Even Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez criticized the Obama-Biden’s Cuba policy, calling it a “compromise on bedrock U.S. values.” Regarding Venezuela, Florida Senator Marco Rubio reminded voters that the Obama-Biden administration “opposed any sanctions” against Nicolas Maduro’s government.

This softness toward Havana and Caracas drives part of Biden’s big Hispanic problem in polling, as a recent NBC survey shows Trump and Biden tied among Florida Hispanics, a 23% underperformance by Biden vs. Hillary Clinton in the same poll in 2016. In addition, as Biden cozies up to avowed socialists in his Democratic Party like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he alienates American Hispanics who did not come to this country to replicate the failure of Latin American nations beset by socialism and systemic corruption. 

Would Biden appoint Governor Cuomo as Attorney General?

Various reports suggest that Biden has slated New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as his selection for Attorney General should Biden win the presidency. Floridians deserve to know Biden’s intentions, particularly given the abysmal and embarrassing record of Cuomo in handling the China Virus crisis in his state. Corporate media figures consistently try to rewrite history and frame Cuomo as some sort of exemplar on coronavirus. But no amount of media adulation, even from his own charlatan brother Chris Cuomo at CNN, can gloss over the dismal record of death that marks Andrew Cuomo’s mismanagement of the virus in New York. He insisted that knowingly-infected patients be forced back into nursing homes full of elderly, vulnerable citizens. This policy created de-facto killing centers, with the loss of at least 6,600 direct deaths -- and the full count was likely much higher, since that total only includes those who physically died in the homes, not including those taken to hospitals. In neighboring New Jersey, Governor Murphy made similar disastrous decisions. If New York and New Jersey were countries, they would tragically lead the entire world in per capita death rates. For this mammoth failure, Biden wants to reward Cuomo by placing him at the perch of all US law enforcement?

In addition, Cuomo’s performance in the crisis stands in sharp contrast to Florida, where Governor DeSantis wisely and ably protected the most vulnerable. In fact, despite having a very similar population and almost identical infection rates, the death toll in Florida is amazingly 1/5th the total of New York state. Instead of Cuomo as Attorney General, how about Ron DeSantis for that post in Trump’s second term?     

– Steve Cortes is Senior Advisor for Strategy to the Trump Campaign.