Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told "The Ingraham Angle" Thursday that Dr. Anthony Fauci's COVID-19 "lockdown policies were not justified by the scientific data," claiming the White House chief medical adviser "fear mongered about schools" and "did not support Florida" when students returned to in-person learning.

DESANTIS: I think he's somebody who if you followed what he said, he said you did a good job. For example, he said New York has the best response to COVID. Obviously, in terms of the numbers, I don't see how you could possibly say that both for COVID and all the destruction that's happened. And so in Florida, we chose freedom over Faucism and we're much better off for doing that. I think his lockdown policies were not justified by the scientific data. He was somebody that fear mongered about schools. He did not support Florida when we had our kids in school in person. I think he was wrong about masks and asymptomatic spread. And then obviously he does so many interviews that it was pretty clear to me, after a pretty short time, this was all about himself in his own image.

He ended up contradicting himself. He was indulging hypotheticals. He ended up having to do political commentary sometimes because the media obviously wanted to use Fauci to attack people like me and other Republicans. And so I think people are going to look back on this period and say, if there's anything, something like this, someone in Fauci's role, that's what you don't do time and time again. And so I think he was way overexposed. And I think what you want to do in these health situations, have one or two clear messages and just keep repeating that. But you don't get to indulge every left-wing reporter in the United States every day. 

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