Stephanie Ruhle Grills Marco Rubio: ‘What in the World is Going On’ in Florida?

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle grilled Florida Senator Marco Rubio on Friday about his state’s response to Coronavirus. Governor Ron DeSantis has been widely criticized for his initial inaction and reluctance to close beaches as the state has racked up more cases.

“Can we talk about your state of Florida? One of the last states — not all the states have participated, one of the most recent to issue this stay-at-home order,” Ruhle asked.

“What in the world is going on down there? You have a whole lot of senior citizens and last I checked, they’re pretty high risk.”

“Yeah, so let me say one thing. I think for all practical purposes, we were in a stay-at-home order. Virtually every county in the state, if not every, had restrictions in place. Perhaps with the exception of,” Rubio said before Ruhle cut him off.

“Senator come on now. You and I — Stop it,” she said.

“No I’m serious, it’s true!” Rubio insisted.

“Okay, but, sir, hold on, hold on though. Those handfuls of counties don’t have walls around them,” Ruhle said.

“You and I both saw pictures of partiers on beaches jamming on it. They’re not bound by those counties, they can get all around the state. Come on!”

“Yeah, that was two or three weeks ago. Those are not recent images. And, all of the counties that those videos reflect have issued orders or closed beaches themselves, or the cities themselves,” Rubio replied. “So, what I’m trying to say is just because you didn’t have a stay-at-home order doesn’t mean people weren’t staying at home.”

“So you support how he’s handled it? You don’t think he should have done it two weeks ago, three weeks ago?” Ruhle went on.

“You know, honestly, I’ve been — I think that we will have plenty of time to look back when this is all done and see all the mistakes that were made, all the errors that were committed at every level, starting at the CDC, you know, congressional oversight, maybe we should have started on the relief bill a week earlier in Congress. Right now, though, we can’t stop to do that. We have to focus on the emergency that’s at hand right now,” he said.

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.