Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri has spent a lot of time talking about Covid-19 and encouraging business owners and residents to wear masks and practice social distancing, but on Friday, he shared some personal details of his own battle with the virus. And he didn’t mince words.
“It’s not the flu. It’s not a cold. It’s a miserable, nasty illness,” Gualtieri said during a Facebook Live question-and-answer session with county administrator Barry Burton.
A few weeks ago, after taking my turn stocking up our church’s Little Free Pantry – a simple, standalone outdoor cupboard with giveaway groceries for anyone in need - a driver stopped by and added a large pack of toilet paper.
I shouted thanks and thought nothing more of it until this week, when Jane Trocheck Walker, executive director of the Daystar Life Center, recalled a woman’s touching gratitude for the toilet paper she had been offered with a bag of food.
This week's Political Party with Adam Smith features one of Tampa Bay's most prominent supporters of Donald Trump: Cliff Gephart, organizer of a massive MAGA boat parade in Pinellas County and owner of Largo's Conservative Grounds Coffee shop that bills itself as a place "where rational, conservative, moral, God loving people congregate without the scourge of liberalism."
We wanted to take take Gephart's pulse about the future of the Make America Great Again movement and the president's unsubstantiated claims of widespread electoral fraud.