Like Wile E. Coyote, the self-anointed geniuses in the political media just keep trying to spring new traps on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And like the Road Runner, DeSantis keeps escaping with his head high while his pursuers’ plans detonate in their faces.
Example: The building collapse in Surfside, Fla., has cost at least 11 lives, likely many more. There must be some way to blame DeSantis, right?
Hannah Dreier of The Washington Post claimed on Twitter that “FEMA was ready to deploy to the condo collapse almost immediately, and included the crisis in its daily briefing, but didn’t get permission from Gov. DeSantis to get on the ground for a full day.” In fact, the law required DeSantis to wait for an emergency declaration by the local mayor; once he had one in hand, he issued his own declaration within an hour. DeSantis, the Democratic mayor and Team Biden have had nothing but good things to say about each other’s cooperation.
Others tried to blame DeSantis’ views on deregulation for the collapse. But he wasn’t even in office when the building was last inspected.
Example: The Washington Post also published an article on a new Florida law with the eye-catching headline claim that “DeSantis mandates surveys of Florida college students’ beliefs.” Creepy, right? But as legal scholar Jonathan Adler noted after reading the bill, “the required survey is not a survey of the political beliefs of students and faculty. . . . It does not ask student, faculty and staff what their viewpoints are, but whether they feel free to express their viewpoints, whatever they may be.”
Example: A pickup truck rammed into a group marching in a gay-pride parade near Fort Lauderdale, killing one. Florida media has usually been better than the national reporters, but this time, it was Florida journalists who rushed to blame DeSantis. Miami-based Lesley Abravanel, the publisher of FloridaPolitics.com, tweeted, “Domestic terrorism made legal by bigot #KimJongRon #DeathSantis. Charlottesville, Part 2.” It turned out this was an accident; the truck driver was a member of the local Gay Men’s Chorus chapter heading for the parade.
Example: The media can’t seem to quit “whistleblower” Rebekah Jones, even after a May exposé by my National Review colleague Charles Cooke of her bogus tales of having been directed to manipulate the Sunshine State’s COVID data to DeSantis’ benefit. As recently as this month, The New York Times still cited Jones as an authority, and CNN’s Chris Cuomo still dismisses Cooke’s thorough debunking as “right-wing fringe attacks.”
The Daily Beast and the Miami Herald recently claimed that she had been designated a whistleblower by Florida’s inspector general, when she had only applied to be considered one.
Example: Last month, Politico published a hit piece headlined “Scarred DeSantis staffers form a support group,” alleging, “We talked to a dozen or so onetime aides and consultants to the Florida governor, and they all said the same thing: DeSantis treats staff like expendable widgets.” But the main thrust seemed to be that consultants and operatives were upset that he hasn’t hired or listened to enough consultants and operatives. And unlike Politico’s unnamed sources, many former DeSantis staffers went on the record to push back.
Example: In mid-April, MSNBC’s Joy Reid and legal analyst Glenn Kirschner claimed that DeSantis must feel “like things are creeping closer and closer to him” in the sex-trafficking investigation of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), and that to avoid jail time, Gaetz will have “to give up somebody bigger than him.” Kirschner added, “We’ve seen the pictures. We’ve heard the stories.” The entire basis of this tinfoil-hat theory of DeSantis being implicated in a sex scandal is that Gaetz was on a 2018 trip to the Bahamas with a guy who raised money for DeSantis.
Example: In April, a “60 Minutes” story claiming that DeSantis had given a COVID-19 vaccine deal to Publix supermarkets in exchange for campaign donations blew up in the face of CBS News. Local TV captured the questioning of DeSantis by the “60 Minutes” reporter, exposing that CBS had deceptively edited out his detailed explanation — backed up by state and local officials — of why Publix was chosen to help vaccinate Florida seniors.
All that in three months of news.
There are common threads here: Journalists keep jumping to conclusions without adequately investigating the facts or seeking comment, and national reporters keep getting things wrong because they don’t care to learn basic things about Florida — and because they seem bent on taking down a highly popular GOP governor. But, as happens to Wile E. Coyote, each trap also backfires in its own particular way. Meep meep.