Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Republican from Florida, responded on Monday to a photo that emerged from the Super Bowl that appeared to show him inside a box without a face mask despite the COVID-19 outbreak.

Marc Caputo, a politics reporter for Politico who covers Florida, took to Twitter to say that DeSantis was at an event and mentioned the picture. He posted that DeSantis "brought up this picture on his own by saying, ‘Someone said, ‘hey, you were at the Super Bowl without a mask’…but how the hell am I going to be able to drink a beer with a mask on? Come on. I has to watch the Bucs win."

An error occurred while retrieving the Tweet. It might have been deleted.

DeSantis has been praised for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak. He told "Fox & Friends Weekend" on Sunday that keeping businesses and schools open amid the coronavirus pandemic has helped "lift people up."

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His critics compared him to former President Trump and say he has been cavalier when it comes to the virus.

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DeSantis told Fox News that Florida has "less COVID mortality per capita than the national average, 25 states or higher, so the lockdowns don’t work on their own, but they cause catastrophic damage to society."

Fox News' Talia Kaplan contributed to this report