DeSantis spokesman Piccolo resigns ‘Serious headwinds’ while spreading misinformation

Says move was set before deleting Twitter account

Gov, Ron DeSantis’ controversial communications director has resigned.

Fred Piccolo says he will be leaving the governor’s office on Jan. 6 for a position in the Florida Department of Education, a move he said was planned before he deleted his Twitter account shortly after his highly criticized Christmas Eve tweet about COVID-19 victims.

“I felt that by the first of the year the governor should probably have a fresh start in regards to communications,” Piccolo told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

“The pandemic had kind of eaten up the oxygen in the room, and with the intro to the vaccines I figured it was as good a time as any.”

Piccolo, who was named DeSantis’s chief spokesman in July, made national headlines last week after stating that photos of each dead COVID-19 victim should be balanced with 99 photos of people who survive the disease.

But Piccolo told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Thursday he had submitted a letter of resignation to the governor’s office on Dec. 23, the day before his controversial tweet.

When asked why he didn’t mention the resignation on Thursday, Piccolo said “I wasn’t sure if I still had a job.”

Piccolo over the past few months has gained notoriety for his personal Twitter account,

which had pushed misinformation about the coronavirus.

He questioned the efficacy of mask-wearing and mask mandates at least 16 times and claimed that COVID-19islessdeadlythan the flu at least three times.

The misinformation was part of a larger pattern of secrecy and spin by the DeSantis administration when it came to their response to their response to the disease.

A Sun Sentinel investigation found that the State of Florida ordered spokespeople for the Florida Department of Health not to discuss the coronavirus in the lead-up to the 2020 election. A subsequent investigation found that the state mysteriously throttled its reporting of virus deaths in the lead-up to the electoral contest.

Piccolo said the controversial approach Florida’s governor has taken to handling the coronavirus outbreak played a hand in his resignation.

“We ran into serious headwinds with it. We believe, and I agree with it, that we are doing the right thing in terms of the pandemic,” he said. “But we definitely faced some serious headwinds in terms of bucking the conventional wisdom.”

Florida has adopted a highly-criticized strategy of “focused protection” when it comes to combating the virus. The state eschews society-wide social distancing efforts and instead has attempted — with little effect — to keep the virus from infecting elderly and vulnerable persons.

Deleting personal twitter account

Early in the morning on Dec. 24, Piccolo tweeted in response to a Reuters photo gallery on COVID-19 that included pictures of victims, despondent doctors and nurses, grieving families, and overwhelmed funeral homes over the course of the pandemic, which has killed almost 343,000 people in the U.S.

“I’m wondering since 99% [of ] Covid patients survive shouldn’t you have 99 photos of survivors for every one fatality?” Piccolo wrote, according to screenshots from Miami Herald and WLRN reporters. “Otherwise you’re just trying to create a narrative that is not reality.”

The tweet drew immediate backlash, and Piccolo deleted his account later that day.

But he said his departure from Twitter was longplanned.

“I’ve made people far angrier with other things in the past; this is just an observation that I think was worthy of consternation,” Piccolo said of his last tweet. “But I said this was going to be my Christmas gift to myself to get off of the medium, so I said let’s do it.”

Piccolo, who was named DeSantis’s chief spokesman in July, said he will move over to the state Department of Education next week, where he will rejoin Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran as Executive Vice Chancellor of Colleges in the Department’s Division of Florida Colleges, which helps administer the states’ university and college system. His new salary was not available on Thursday.

Piccolo previously worked for Corcoran at the state House Speaker’s office.

Also, Piccolo had previously served as former Florida House Speaker Jose Oliva’s spokesman during Oliva’s tenure at the head of the state’s lower chamber.

Piccolo