DeSantis Slams Media for Focusing on Tampa Before Ian and Criticizing Lee County for Evacuation Timing: ‘It’s a Little Rich’

CAPE CORAL (FLV) – When a reporter at a Cape Coral press conference asked Gov. Ron DeSantis about a prominent narrative that Lee County officials did not evacuate parts of their region soon enough before Hurricane Ian made landfall, the governor did not hold back.

“I wanna talk to you about evacuation orders-” the reporter said before DeSantis cut in: “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, this has been handled ad nauseum, I know you can talk about these officials – ask them about it, that’s fine – go ahead ma’am.”

The reporter continued, prompting a response from the governor: “Stop, stop, ok? This has been dealt with, Lee County has explained what they did… Of course you’re gonna review everything we do in these storms. I mean that’s the way it works… How could we do that better?”

DeSantis urged onlookers to focus on “lifting people up” and asked the media to “stop incessantly talking and trying to cast dispersions on people that were doing the best job they could with imperfect information.”

Before Ian made landfall, models were shifting and in disagreement, ranging from the storm making landfall in the western Panhandle of Florida to Lee County.

“I followed not just the NHC track the Euro model, the icon model, the GFS, Most of you probably don’t even know what those are,” DeSantis said. “So I followed those religiously overnight, all this stuff, you’d get the data, you go and you try to figure out – it was moving west and then it started coming back east.”

The governor – who’s been holding multiple press conferences per day since before the hurricane made landfall – blasted the media for scrutinizing Lee County officials, who ordered evacuations the day before landfall – despite models initially pointing to a Tampa Bay area ground zero before shifting southeast.

“It’s a little rich coming from an industry that on Monday [Sept. 26] all day they were all in Tampa Bay saying it was going to be the worst case scenario for Florida straight into Tampa Bay. That’s what they were saying. Now they’re turning around and wondering why people 100 and 50 or 100 and 20 miles didn’t do something they were not telling people to do.”

DeSantis finished his response asking observers to thank the personnel providing emergency relief, assistance, and rescue operations to affected areas.

“But but I just think we need to focus on on, on getting people where they need to be with power, with food, with all these different things and let’s spend a little more time doing that and let’s spend a little more time maybe thanking the people that are out there on the front line, saving people’s lives.”