THEY HATE ANY EFFECTIVE OPPOSITION: The media’s deranged obsession with Ron DeSantis — even before he declares for 2024.
It’s poised to be a long two years for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Fresh off a nearly 20-point re-election win, and not yet having even announced his intention to run for president in 2024, DeSantis has become media enemy No. 1.
Take the case of Rebekah Jones, a pretend whistleblower who alleged with zero evidence that Florida was hiding its true COVID death rate. This week, in a deal with prosecutors, she admitted illegally accessing a state computer. She’d been a media darling because of her attacks on DeSantis.
On her website, Jones helpfully compiled a list of credulous media outlets that ran her false claims without checking. CNN, The Washington Post, MSNBC, Yahoo News, The Miami Herald and so on all fell for her lies, some many times over.
Much is made of Republicans choosing poor-quality candidates but Jones was most recently the Democratic nominee for Congress from Florida’s 1st Congressional District. She lost, thankfully, but that was just weeks before her guilty plea.
Have any of the media outlets repented? Apologized? Of course not. Stopping a potential DeSantis presidential candidacy is their first priority and admitting they were had, or complicit, in Jones’ lies would be a setback.
The Miami Herald, unable to give up its solidarity with Jones, this week even ran an incorrect headline alleging, “Charges against former state health department worker dismissed after she admits guilt.” The admission of guilt is just one of the six special conditions Jones will have to meet, including paying a hefty $20,000 fine and attending therapy, before those charges get dropped in two years.
For over two years, the media held up Jones as evidence DeSantis hadn’t managed the pandemic as successfully as it seemed. Now they should admit DeSantis was right and the pro-lockdown blue-state governors they so love were wrong.
They should do a lot of things, many of them anatomically impossible.
Flashback: Ron DeSantis has emerged as America’s awesome ‘shadow president.’