When Reporters Make Fools of Themselves, It Doesn’t Reflect Poorly on DeSantis

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, June 01, 2023

 

In the week since Florida governor Ron DeSantis launched his presidential campaign, political observers have been forced to witness a bizarre martyrology. Frustrated by the governor’s penchant for stonewalling them, reporters have taken to bombarding him with superfluous questions, to which the governor responds with amused indignation, if he responds at all. It would be a footnote to the campaign if these reporters didn’t promote these episodes online with video evidence of the interactions with DeSantis in the mistaken expectation that it makes him look bad. It doesn’t.

 

On Thursday, Associated Press reporter Steve Peoples confronted DeSantis at an event in Laconia, N.H., where the governor had just concluded a stump speech. According to the reporter’s account of events, he asked DeSantis “why he hasn’t taken any questions from voters so far.” To this mildly pointed question, DeSantis supposedly lashed out:

 

“People are coming up to me, talking to me. What are you talking about? Are you blind? Are you blind? People are coming up to me, talking to me whatever they want to talk to me about.”

 

Shortly after this exchange was published on Twitter, the pro-DeSantis PAC Never Back Down published a video of the exchange captured by NBC News, which Peoples himself promoted.

 

In order to answer the charge that he refuses to talk with voters, DeSantis had to break off an ongoing exchange with voters.

 

This was not an attempt to ignite a fabricated war with the press for the benefit of media-hating Republican primary voters. DeSantis was not visibly flustered. If he was perturbed at all, he managed to control his emotions. Nor were DeSantis’s supporters in the room much put off by the candidate’s conduct, though the campaign’s minimally competent advance work ensured that the room wasn’t populated with DeSantis critics. What are we privy to here beyond a banal exercise in basic campaign work?

 

Politico senior columnist Jonathan Martin acknowledged all this. “But,” he added, “the larger problem [with] DeSantis[‘s] reaction is it shows he still doesn’t grasp the bad will he’s courting by, in this case, lashing out at one of the top reporters for the @AP.”

 

So, to reporters, it’s personal. To judge by DeSantis’s demeanor, however, it’s only business.

 

This exchange was reminiscent of a similar exercise in narrative-crafting by Puck reporter Tara Palmeri, whose efforts were belied by the video of her terse and entirely one-sided exchange with the governor.

 

Palmeri related her experience of attempting to question DeSantis: The governor “seemed almost to be running away from me.” DeSantis’s aides countered by posting a video of Palmeri’s inquiries. “I am Italian American too. Does that matter to you?” she asked. “Why are you against Disney characters? Which one is your favorite one?” DeSantis’s unwillingness to defer to ethnic chauvinism and elaborate on his favorite cartoons wasn’t all that Palmeri exposed.

 

The reporter answered the DeSantis camp’s video with her own, in which she peppered the governor with questions about his willingness to meet with Disney CEO Bob Iger, the box-office potential of a live-action version of The Little Mermaid, the political viability of Florida’s six-week abortion ban, and, of course, his refusal to speak with the press. At least in part, that final query is answered by the questions preceding it.

 

The journalistic establishment seems to be operating under the flawed assumption that their hostility toward the governor is both justified and requited by DeSantis. From the outside, however, these look like cloying displays in pursuit of the attention the governor won’t give them — not out of antipathy but out of ambivalence.

 

It could not be that the governor doesn’t care for and doesn’t need conventional mass media. He must really not like them. And his refusal to acknowledge the necessity of the mainstream press must be met with consequences.

 

This seems so far to be a melodrama that exists only in the minds of reporters. But if members of the political-journalism establishment think that making themselves into hysterical parodies of their industry somehow hurts DeSantis, they’ve miscalculated.