The Gainesville Sun by Jim Turner The News Service Florida
May 29, 2019
TALLAHASSEE — A long-promoted and legally contested meeting of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet in Jerusalem became a tech glitch-filled affair Wednesday for government aides and reporters watching the session from inside the state Capitol, more than 6,000 miles away.
Viewers of the Florida Channel were able to screen an uninterrupted livestream of the nearly 40-minute “ceremonial” meeting held at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
However, in the Cabinet meeting room in the Capitol — where members of the public gathered to watch DeSantis and the Cabinet members — the video went dark a few times, and the audio feed was often out of sync with the video.
A prayer, performed in Tallahassee, was cut short when the phone connection between the Capitol and embassy went down, resulting in a four-minute blackout of the meeting for Cabinet-room participants and onlookers.
Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis completed the invocation in Jerusalem.
A few minutes later, the telephone conference restarted, interrupting Attorney General Ashley Moody as she praised what she was learning from Israelis.
After the pause, Moody drew laughter by quickly noting, “And they have excelled in technology in ways that we are learning from on a daily basis.”