Former failed presidential candidate Howard Dean has been called out for pushing conspiracies in an attempt to paint Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a negative light.

According to Town Hall:

If we’re starting to resemble something of a broken record writing about Florida’s COVID response so frequently, it’s probably because progressives and journalists – one in the same, in most cases – started attacking the state on this front at the onset of the pandemic and have never ceased, irrespective of the data or real-world outcomes. Correcting misinformation, clarifying the record, debunking myths, and checking facts on these matters sometimes feels like a full-time project. The latest example comes from a former Democratic governor and DNC chairman, who is the most recent figure to embrace the baseless conspiracy theory that Florida’s stats aren’t as bad as they “should” be because the state government is hiding the “true” data. They cannot process Florida and California taking opposite paths on mitigation and ending up with nearly identical case and death rates, so they conclude that Florida must be cheating. There is absolutely no evidence of this, of course.

Howard Dean’s “BlueAnon” moment came in response to a piece by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic, essentially arguing that both political tribes are significantly overstating their preferred narratives about Florida. His basic conclusion is that Florida is sort of…average, which – granting his thesis for the sake of argument – I’d argue is an achievement, given their challenges and their favorable economic position, relative to other large states with far more restrictions (and similar or worse health outcomes). Dean simply could not accept that progressives have been wrong about their doomsday predictions and caustic condemnations of Gov. Ron DeSantis and company, so he descended into madness:

He could be talking about New York, which actually cooked the books, but he’s not, for obvious partisan reasons. It is dangerous for prominent people to use their influence to push false information about COVID, and for some, this has resulted in sanctions from Twitter. Whether intentional or not, Dean’s claim about DeSantis and his “henchmen” is an absolute lie. Florida’s data is very transparent and accurate, the opposite of “worthless.” Much of this widely-accepted lie on the Left is rooted in the saga of Rebekah Jones, a bogus “whistleblower” whose dishonesty, lack of ethics, and alleged multiple crimes utterly discredit the claims she’s advanced. She was feted in the press because of her explosive allegations that aligned with what many in the press wanted to hear, but it’s just not true. Read this and especially this. Many outlets have since backed away from her, but not all. And her high-profile round of false accusations still reverberate with people who wish to believe them. Beyond the Jones nonsense, one of Florida’s top Democrats has explicitly rejected Dean’s brand of paranoid innuendo:

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“Jones has held three jobs in her field; all three have ended in her being terminated and criminally charged.” What a sentence. It’s incredible that confirmation bias-hungry leftists continue to put stock in anything she says, including high-profile leaders who ought to know better. Maybe they do know better, but don’t care. Two more points: The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project, which stopped new data collection in early March, used to grade states on the quality of their data. Florida consistently earned an “A.” Also, let’s pretend for a moment that the conspiracy crowd is onto something and the Sunshine State has been shrouding COVID deaths in darkness to downplay its problem. It’s not true, but let’s just indulge it for a moment. That theory would be given some oxygen if Florida’s so-called “excess deaths” over the last year were suspiciously high, compared to officially-recorded COVID deaths. Last week, The New York Times examined “excess deaths” in America…

The article also mentions that Moskowitz would not deny he was referring to Rebekah Jones who has reportedly been lying for months.

According to Benson:

“Jones has held three jobs in her field; all three have ended in her being terminated and criminally charged.” What a sentence. It’s incredible that confirmation bias-hungry leftists continue to put stock in anything she says, including high-profile leaders who ought to know better. Maybe they do know better, but don’t care. Two more points: The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project, which stopped new data collection in early March, used to grade states on the quality of their data. Florida consistently earned an “A.”