WATCH: DeSantis SLAMS CDC guidelines for schools, calls them ‘politics, not science’

DeSantis talked specifically about the CDC's recommendations for schools and summer camps in his speech, saying:

"If you look at some of the stuff that they’ve done on school openings, where they’re basically doing the teacher’s union’s bidding, when they say these kids should be masked in summer camp outdoors. I’m sorry, that’s not science, that’s politics."

"Do you want one unelected bureaucracy to be able to have the power to indefinitely shut down a major industry in this country?"

Gov. DeSantis continued, pointing out how the state he governs is making a strong recovery from the pandemic:

"You have a surplus of jobs, and particularly in restaurant, lodging, hospitality, that people want to hire. I mean, you see these signs all over the place. Look, that’s a good problem to have. But we also just want to make sure, look, if you’re really unemployed, can’t get a job, that’s one thing, but making sure that you’re doing your due diligence to look for work and making sure those incentives align better.”

"And what we were able to do by keeping Florida open, we saved hundreds of thousands of jobs in the restaurant, hotel, hospitality industry. We saved thousands of businesses. You know how I know that? Because every time I go out, someone will come up to me and say, 'Thank you for saving my job,' or 'Thank you for saving my business.'"

"So we’ve been able now with 4.7 percent unemployment, that’s significantly less than the national average of 6% and way less than lockdown states like New York and California have."

Then, Gov. DeSantis talked a bit about the beleaguered cruise industry, which has been affected greatly by federal regulations:

"The CDC has mothballed this for over a year. They said that it was going to be two weeks last March. You know the cruise industry, they wanted to do the right thing. So they’re like, “All right, it’s not going to be easy for us, but we’re going to do it.” Now here we are over a year later and there’s no end in sight. Now they say you can only cruise if you have 98% people show proof of vaccination, but that’s ridiculous. They’re cruising in other parts of the world where they don’t even have availability of vaccines yet, where they have much higher Covid than in the United States."

The DeSantis administration is currently suing the CDC in Miami in order get cruise lines to re-open.

"When we announced the lawsuit in Miami, I’ll never forget it. We had a bunch of folks behind me, kind of like this, but they were all people who worked in the industry, and not just worked for the cruise lines."