Florida governor Ron DeSantis snapped at an Associated Press reporter who asked him why he wasn’t taking questions from voters at a New Hampshire event, retorting: “Are you blind?”
DeSantis is doing a sweep of the early Republican primary states after announcing his campaign on Twitter last week. After giving a speech in Laconia, New Hampshire Thursday morning, DeSantis declined to take questions from the podium, opting to mingle and take pictures with individual voters.
“Governor, how come you’re not taking questions from voters?” asked an Associated Press reporter.
“People are coming up to me, talking to me. What are you talking about? Are you blind? Are you blind?” DeSantis responded angrily.
“No,” replied the reporter.
“Okay, so people are coming up to me, talking to me. Whatever they want to talk to me about,” DeSantis said in response.
Jonathan Allen, senior national politics reporter at NBC, recorded the interaction.
After declining to take audience questions after his first New Hampshire campaign event today, Ron DeSantis lashed out at a reporter for asking him about it while he was chatting with members of the crowd individually.
Here’s the video, via @NBCNews —> pic.twitter.com/Z2WtLy0JNj
— Jonathan Allen (@jonallendc) June 1, 2023
Allen explained that the decision not to take questions was surprising and frustrating to some Republicans who came to hear DeSantis speak.
DeSantis affiliates took a different interpretation of proceedings, with Never Back Down, a pro-DeSantis super PAC, saying the interaction showed the governor shutting down a biased reporter.
Press secretary Bryan Griffin wrote on Twitter that the interaction was “perfectly illustrative of the modern media shutting their eyes and ears to the truth to push their narrative.”