The headlines this week have not been kind to Ron DeSantis, who is attempting and so far failing to catch up in the polls to 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. Even the Republican-friendly Fox News has questioned why DeSantis recently barely seems to be able to break 20 percent, even with his bizarre campaign ads. But according to DeSantis, the reason for these headlines is not that his campaign is actually failing. No, instead he blames a vast media conspiracy for his lack of success in the polls.
“You’ve done a great job pushing back against woke. We know that,” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo said to DeSantis during Sunday Morning Futures. “But I’m wondering what’s going on with your campaign. There was a lot of optimism about you running for president earlier in the year, but here’s this weekend’s headline from Politico Playbook: ‘Failure to launch. Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ campaign to topple Donald Trump has stalled. “We are way behind,” says a top DeSantis PAC official, sounding the alarm.’ What happened?”
“These are narratives,” DeSantis replied after letting out a nervous chuckle. “The media does not want me to be the nominee. I think that’s very, very clear. Why? Because they know I’ll beat Biden. But even more importantly, they know I will actually deliver on all these things.”
But in order to get an opportunity to “beat Biden,” DeSantis must first beat Trump. According to an NBC News poll, however, DeSantis’ numbers have been going in the wrong direction. In late June, DeSantis received support from 22 percent of Republican primary voters. That’s a nine percent drop from an NBC News poll in April that placed DeSantis at 31 percent.
The governor found himself facing similar questions about his campaign’s lack of success on Fox this past Thursday, when host Will Cain asked him: “While Donald Trump is above 50 percent — in some of these polls, 60 percent — your numbers are somewhere between 20 percent and 10 percent. And they’ve stayed there for about two months. Why is it in your estimation the numbers have not reflected your success in Florida?”
“Well, I think if you look at the people like the corporate media, who are they going after? Who do they not want to be the nominee? They’re going after me,” DeSantis replied, again trying to blame the press, but with a new addition to the alleged conspiracy against him: the president of Mexico. “Who’s the president of Mexico attacking because he knows who’ll be strong on the border and hold him accountable and the cartels? He’s going after me. So, I think if you look at all these people that are responsible for a lot of the ills in our society, they’re targeting me as the person they do not want to see as the candidate.”
Speaking of conspiracies, DeSantis on Sunday also accused rival Trump of “colluding” with Big Tech to censor media related to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
“We’re going to clean house at the Department of Justice,” DeSantis said. “I look back at the Hunter Biden censorship which was a huge, huge deal to happen in the 2020 election. And yet, you know, those were Donald Trump’s own agencies that were colluding with big tech. I would never allow that to happen. I would fire those people immediately. And, in fact, in Florida we’ve signed legislation that prohibits all state and local government officials in our state from colluding with tech companies to try to censor the political speech of Americans.”
That’s right, DeSantis just accused Trump of conspiring with big tech against himself to block a negative story about his opponent’s son. No wonder his campaign is struggling.
Source link: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/desantis-fox-news-media-sabotaging-campaign-1234785262/