Any success Ron DeSantis enjoys moving forward will be in large part attributable to the media’s incompetent endeavors to destroy him.
Any success he enjoys moving forward will be in large part attributable to the media’s incompetent endeavors to destroy him.
‘W e have the best damn governor in the country.”
Unprompted, that’s what the first Floridian I spoke with relayed to me during my recent trip to the Sunshine State. “Biden’s trying to tell us what to do, and our guy is telling him to get lost.” Though it seems this story should be preempted by “Once upon a time . . .” and then dismissed as a tall tale told for political convenience’s sake, you’ll just have to take my word for it that this interaction really did occur.
So long as Donald Trump doesn’t seek the presidency for a third time, it would seem that Ron DeSantis will enter the 2024 Republican primary as a, if not the, front-runner. CPAC’s straw poll pegged him as the favorite in that scenario. As another Republican governor of Florida learned the hard way back in 2016, entering the primaries as a front-runner doesn’t count for quite as much as it once did, but it still counts for something. Moreover, the reasons for DeSantis’s status as a favorite suggest that optimism for his prospective run is more warranted now than it was for Jeb Bush’s run five years ago.
What are those reasons? Chief among them is that “DeathSantis” is now trending on Twitter. Sunday evening saw a new, narrative-driven hit on DeSantis drop on 60 Minutes. Already, the segment has been exposed as a fraud. From National Review’s editorial on CBS’s shoddy dishonesty:
The supposed “problem” that 60 Minutes highlighted was that Florida’s government has used the popular grocery chain Publix to help it distribute COVID-19 vaccines, that Publix gave $100,000 to Governor DeSantis’s re-election efforts last year, and that the combination of the two represents a quid pro quo.
This claim is absurd on its face. Not only is Publix the largest and most widely trusted grocery-store chain in the state of Florida, but the majority of its 831 stores in the state have well-equipped pharmacies at which Floridians are accustomed to getting flu shots. Irrespective of any other logistical considerations, it would have been surprising if Publix had not been one of the major players in the state’s effort. It is true that Publix has recently given $100,000 to Ron DeSantis’s gubernatorial reelection bid. It is also true that it gave a million dollars to the progressive Urban League last year, and that, back in 2018, it gave $100,000 to Democratic campaigns in the state. To believe that there is a connection between this routine behavior and decisions that were made during an unforeseen once-in-a-century pandemic is to stretch oneself to the breaking point.
The producers of 60 Minutes know this, which is why they edited out the portion of Governor DeSantis’s answer that explains beyond question why Publix was chosen for its role. In the offending segment, CBS’s Sharyn Alfonsi is seen asking DeSantis, “Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign, and then you rewarded them with the exclusive rights to distribute the vaccination in Palm Beach. How is that not pay for play?” But only DeSantis’s initial response is shown in full. Deliberately missing from the governor’s comments was his detailed answer laying out how the distribution system has worked in Florida in general, and how Publix has slotted into it in particular. . . .
The 60 Minutes segment comes as an addition to, not the inaugural entry in, a tired pandemic genre of insisting that DeSantis is at the head of a Jonesville-style death cult. From the very beginning, he was pilloried for what CNN’s Chris Cillizza called a “hands-off” approach, a false charge that would have been far preferable to Andrew Cuomo’s very hands-on approach, even if it were rooted in truth.
When the data didn’t conform to this invented morbid narrative of life (and death) in Florida, many in the media fell hook, line, and sinker for the lie that DeSantis was doctoring his state’s COVID data, a conspiracy theory pushed by a lunatic huckster who is right now being prosecuted on stalking charges. Indeed, Rebekah Jones’s deceptions were amplified by NPR, the New York Times, and Yahoo among many other supposedly reputable outlets.
At every turn, the accusations against DeSantis — that he’s incompetent, that he’s reckless, that he’s corrupt — have been proven demonstrably false. Worse yet for his adversaries in the press, DeSantis is adept at capitalizing on their lazy antipathy toward him. He confronts them with righteous anger that reminds voters why they adored the 45th president, just without the invectives, non-sequiturs, and baggage.
One of the great fears of the left-leaning chattering class has been that something far worse than Trump is on the horizon: That bad as he was, Trump was manifestly unfit for office and did little to help himself politically; that a more-savvy figure with an iota of self-control might achieve things Trump could only have dreamed of; that nightmare has been made reality — in part.
In their effort to destroy the man they saw as Trump’s successor, the press have twisted, lied, slandered, and whined. Much more than DeSantis, they themselves embodied their image of Trump. In so doing, they turned DeSantis — who barely triumphed over the hapless Andrew Gillum in 2018’s gubernatorial contest — into a national political force with all of the conservative cred of a Trump and none of the warts that offend many American sensibilities.
Ron DeSantis has all of the right enemies, and any success he enjoys moving forward will be in large part attributable to their incompetent endeavors to destroy him.