The media are working hard to make Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis the national coronavirus villain. In doing so, they just might make him the 2024 GOP nominee.
DeSantis has been the target of criticism since the early days of the pandemic for reopening Florida earlier than the experts would have liked. They predicted his reluctance to lock down the state and implement coronavirus restrictions would result in widespread deaths and overwhelmed hospitals. DeSantis proved them wrong: Florida’s death rate is half of New York’s and far below most other states’, including Mississippi’s, South Dakota’s, Michigan’s, Illinois’s, and so on.
But the media have not stopped. Now, they’re attacking DeSantis over his vaccination strategy, which is to prioritize elderly residents first. NBC News ran a piece over the weekend suggesting DeSantis was only prioritizing senior citizens because they might be Republican voters — to say nothing of the fact that senior citizens are also the most at-risk group.
CBS News followed suit and suggested DeSantis engaged in political corruption by giving Publix supermarkets the sole right to distribute coronavirus vaccines in certain parts of the state because Publix once donated to a political action committee associated with DeSantis.
The outlet also claimed a pop-up vaccination event at a wealthy community along the state’s Gulf Coast was proof DeSantis has been allowing Republican donors to get the vaccine ahead of other citizens. The Washington Post and Tampa Bay Times published similar stories.
But what the media failed to mention is that similar pop-up vaccination events have been happening all across the state, including in underserved minority communities, as National Review noted. The only purpose of these events is to vaccinate as many people as possible in a timely fashion, and, according to Florida officials, it’s working. More than 42,000 people are vaccinated at these pop-up clinics on a daily basis, according to the state’s Department of Health.
The media have also ignored DeSantis’s efforts to partner with local churches in rural areas where vaccine distribution centers aren’t easily accessible or his administration’s new program that delivers vaccines to homebound seniors. These are important steps toward herd immunity, but you won’t hear anything about them from media determined to make DeSantis the bad guy.
This crusade against DeSantis will backfire. He’s already developed quite the national following because of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and in Florida, he’s still very popular. The media’s constant, transparently partisan attacks will only encourage Republicans to rally behind him, and, as a result, his popularity will continue to grow. A recent poll even has DeSantis as one of the top three contenders behind former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Ted Cruz for the 2024 GOP nomination.
DeSantis hasn’t indicated yet whether he will run for the presidency in 2024. But if he does decide to launch a campaign, he will be a serious contender. The media will have made sure of that.
