‘Give Me a Break!’ Ron DeSantis Loses It on Reporter Asking About Wall Street’s $50 Billion Damage Estimate

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis snapped at a reporter on Thursday who asked about an estimated cost of damages caused by Hurricane Milton.

While providing an update after the hurricane made landfall in Florida on Wednesday, DeSantis was asked about an estimate by Wall Street analysts earlier in the week that put the cost of storm damages at $50 billion, possibly as much as $175 billion in a worst-case scenario. DeSantis dismissed the numbers as he got testy with the reporter:

Reporter: Wall Street analysts predicted that Milton’s losses could exceed $50 billion. Does the state have any sort of–

DeSantis: How the hell would a Wall Street analyst be able to know — it’s been dark all day! What, you just going to know that you’re going to do? I mean, like give me a break on some of this stuff. They’re doing damage assessments now. They always say this or that or whatever. I mean, what I would say is what I said in the original talkers. We had certain worst-case scenarios in terms of going into Tampa Bay, a lot of places in Pinellas County, and they had negative storm surge because it sucked the water out of the bay. So, in terms of all that, where you’d see the entire Tampa Bay area underwater, that did not happen.

The storm surge in, it was most acute in Sarasota. And I think it was a little bit more than Sarasota got four for Helene, but it wasn’t like so much more than it was eight to 10 feet. Helene, of course, got almost to 20 in Taylor County. And then I think the fact that the storm weakened, I think most of I mean — I’m not saying there’s not going to be damage. There will be. It cut across the state in a way that Helene did not. But in terms of just, right now, the morning after, if I think back to, like, Hurricane Ian, I don’t think that you’re looking at similar amount of damage to Ian. And then with Helene there may end up being more overall damage. There may not, I don’t know. But definitely the surge did not reach Helene levels.

Watch the video above via Fox News.