...And on the seventh day God tried the fish sandwich from Popeyes–which he declared the work of Satan–and stumbled into an alley and vomited.
Thus, Florida was born.
Since then all of the wild-ass stories coming out of Florida can only be classified as Florida stories because Florida will forever be the trailer park cousin hooked on meth to the rest of the 49 states.
Gregg Prentice, a Florida Republican who was also an anti-masker, tested positive for COVID-19 and died a day later in Tampa. The funny part (and I mean this in a Florida way) is that he worked for the Hillsborough County Election Integrity Committee, and maybe it was his allegiance to the job or his commitment to ensure that no one would ever sully Florida politics, but when he died he took “access to essential campaign finance software” with him.
From the Daily Beast:
In a Sept. 14 letter to the Federal Election Commission, the Hillsborough County Republican Executive Committee reported it might not be able to file its monthly financial reports as required—because only Prentice knew how to do it.
“Gregg’s software converted data from our Quickbooks software to supply the information needed by the FEC,” it states. “Unfortunately, Gregg passed away suddenly from Covid-19 on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. Gregg did not share the software and instructions with our officers. We will have to enter the August data manually, and according to the information we have received from our FEC analyst, Scott Bennett, we may likely have to re-enter the data from our first 7 months of 2021.
“We will be struggling to get all of this entered in the proper format by our deadline on Sept. 20, but we will try to do so with our best effort.”
Prentice wasn’t just an anti-masker; he was against the vaccine and other COVID-prevention measures. He, much like the rest of the Trump-tainted GOP, was also anti-Dr. Anthony Fauci and reportedly wrote “end Faucism” on his Twitter account, because fuck listening to the top infectious disease doctor when a social media meme says that the COVID-19 vaccine is going to put a computer chip in your body.
The Daily Beast notes that Prentice “also insisted the U.S. needs ‘more socialist distancing than we do social distancing’ and that the pandemic was created to destroy small businesses.”
Well, it’s good that Prentice took a stand for something, and that stand also led to his wife and daughter catching the virus, a spokesperson for the Hillsborough Republican Executive Committee told the Daily Beast.
But, of course, death doesn’t stop a good lie from moving around the conspiracy world. In fact, it adds to it.
Prentice’s friend Jason Kimball, without any evidence, blames Tampa General Hospital for the 61-year-old’s death, alleging staff “illegally intubated” Prentice the day before he died.
“My public comments are really going to be about Tampa General Hospital,” Kimball said at a Sept. 13 council meeting. “There’s a dire situation going on right now... that I don’t think anyone is aware of, and I have firsthand knowledge of it. They’re intubating everyone entering Tampa General Hospital as a first line of action. They’re using fatality-treatment protocol, and I think that the city council really needs to do an investigation... They’re intubating people illegally... When you call 911 and you go to that hospital, you’re going into a bad situation.”
Councilman John Dingfelder didn’t want to hear Kimball’s comment, blasting it as “dangerous.”
“Though we respect the First Amendment rights from everybody who calls in... I think it’s an extremely dangerous comment to be spreading to the community that they shouldn’t go to Tampa General Hospital... [It] is the top one or two hospitals in this community... There’s no finer place. Doctors and staff are dedicated to saving lives, and if I was sick with COVID... I would go to Tampa General Hospital,” the Democrat representing Tampa’s Third District said, the Daily Beast reports.
“That was a very dangerous comment from that individual... People listen to ridiculous comments without doing the right research.”
This is basically all of Florida.