Florida Representative Byron Daniels, who is hoping to be the state's next governor, made this pathetic claim while downplaying the role vaccine hesitancy is playing in the measles outbreaks across the country and in his home state.

Daniels made an appearance on this Thursday's Inside Politics on CNN and was asked by host Dana Bash about measles cases increasing across the country, particularly an outbreak in southwest Florida.

Byron did his best to pretend that the current Surgeon General of Florida, Joseph Ladapo, who Byron wants to keep on if he's elected, isn't a raging lunatic nut job who has no business being involved in public health in any way, shape or form, and defended the fact that he won't speak to the press, while lying that undocumented immigrants are somehow responsible for these outbreaks.

BASH: I also want to ask about a policy issue that's a very important one in Florida, and that's measles. Measles cases in America have increased over the past year, and the outbreak right now in southwest Florida is adding to that.

The State Department of Health has been quiet. There has been little public information about the state outbreak. In fact, CNN spent a month calling and emailing State Health Department officials and got no response.

Are you satisfied with how the state is handling the measles outbreak?

DONALDS: Actually, so the place you're talking about is a little bit outside of my congressional district. I used to represent Ave Maria when I was in the state house.

BASH: But you want to be governor.

DONALDS: Well, I'm going to get to that point. Okay. What we're doing to manage that outbreak uh is actually working quite well. We're getting it under control. I actually had a volunteer who was a part of that measles outbreak. She's getting the medical care that she needs.

I will add one of the reasons we're having some of these outbreaks across the country -is because what the Democrats allowed by leaving our country open to 10 million people coming into the country. This is true...

BASH: But there's a lot of vaccination hesitancy because of messaging.

DONALDS: No, no, no, no. The vaccination hesitancy is one thing, and you can't talk about a thing that's been happening with vaccines over the last five years. Those kids are probably five, six years old.

We're talking about adults who are in this measles outbreak, and you have to acknowledge the reality that when you open up the borders of our nation and just let people come in illegally, you are going to have major public health concerns.

This is why there was a measles outbreak in West Texas, because of the same reasons. And that's why border security and common-sense policy is critical for the future of America.

BASH: If you could, I know you said you want to keep the Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on if you win. If you can ask him to call back the media as a public health service, that would be great.

DONALDS: Well, his number one job is to take care of the public health of Florida, not to actually message and talk about these issues with the press. I would argue that Mr. Ladapo...

BASH: It's not the press. It's the public.

DONALDS: The governor will actually be communicating with the people of Florida. That's part of his job and his mission. And when I'm governor, I'll be doing the same.

I want our officials, the people who we hire to run these agencies, to do their jobs and be focused on running these agencies effectively. I think that the political arm will take care of the press and communicating with the public about what's facing Florida and the solutions we have to solve it.

BASH: And that hasn't happened yet.

Never mind that Texas health officials explicitly said they had no evidence linking their outbreak to immigration, and the Florida outbreak is centered at a private university campus. Both outbreaks are consistent with what epidemiologists say drives measles: communities with vaccination rates below the ~95% herd immunity threshold, which is caused by... you guessed it... vaccine hesitancy. Not "open borders" or immigration.

That won't stop liars like Donalds from trying to demonize immigrants as a disease-ridden and somehow the source of all of our problems. Disgusting. He's not fit to be governor, but neither is DeSantis, and that didn't stop Republicans from voting for him anyway.