‘Sounds like the ranting of a loser,’ Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita told NR when asked about DeSantis’s comments.
ANKENY, Iowa—Several inches of overnight snowfall and continuing blizzards didn’t deter Ron DeSantis from trekking out to an early morning event in central Iowa, where he went after GOP frontrunner and former President Donald Trump and urged on-the-fence voters to consider an alternative in Monday’s first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus.
But later in the day DeSantis turned up the heat against an adversary he won’t be facing at the ballot box this cycle: The conservative media complex. In a rare break from his quotidian criticisms against the mainstream press, DeSantis argued Friday that concerns about ratings have prompted many right-wing outlets to prop up Trump in their coverage and ignore many of his primary rivals’ policy-related criticisms of his presidency.
“He’s got basically a Praetorian guard of the conservative media — Fox News, those websites, all the stuff they just don’t, they don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers, and they don’t want to have the ratings go down,” DeSantis told a gaggle of reporters in Urbandale, Iowa, Friday afternoon. “That’s just the reality. That’s just the truth. And I’m not complaining about it. I’d rather that not be the case.”
Because Trump hasn’t participated in any of the Republican primary debates this cycle, DeSantis argued, the former president’s rivals have struggled to get conservative media outlets to cover their criticisms of the former president’s record. So instead of getting coverage for criticizing Trump onstage, he lamented, the candidates have made headlines for ripping each other apart in his absence.
“That is kind of the reason why I think he’s able to do what he’s doing, because the sources that Republicans are now looking to more than any, are just not even engaging in any of this,” he continued.
In DeSantis’s view, this is one of the main reasons it’s been so difficult for other candidates to break through.
“Sounds like the ranting of a loser,” Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita told NR when asked about DeSantis’s comments.
“It looks to me like DeSantis is starting to lay blame for his campaign’s failure at everyone’s feet but his own,” says Mike Dennehy, a New Hampshire-based GOP strategist. “It’s unbecoming for a successful governor who had the conservative media singing his praises just one short year ago.”
During town halls, DeSantis often ticks through his long list of conservative policy wins in Florida: Keeping schools and churches open during the pandemic, thwarting teachers’ unions, and protecting universal school choice. Not to mention winning re-election last cycle by nearly 20 points.
That record has certainly won over some caucus-goers. “I’ve seen what he has done in the state of Florida. I’ve seen the growth. I’ve seen the positive feedback about how wonderful a state of Florida is,” Florida native Andy Weisheit told NR at Friday morning’s event. “I’ve always been predisposed to supporting a governor that has a record.”
But as many pundits have noted throughout the cycle, another major problem for DeSantis is that he’s perceived by many voters as running as a continuation of the Trump phenomenon with none of the baggage — a candidate who will actually follow through on many of the former president’s promises to “build the wall” and “drain the swamp.” There’s a sense in which DeSantis is trying to out-MAGA Trump, telling voters daily about how the former president added to the debt and elevated his former White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci. But the central question for voters remains: Why vote for him when the other guy is still in the race?
Making matters worse for DeSantis, many Iowa caucus-goers who are eager for the party to move on from Trump don’t think DeSantis is best-suited to replace him. Polls suggest he’s now neck-and-neck with Haley and still lightyears behind Trump.
“I’m supporting Nikki Haley,” says Carmine Boal, a former state representative who now serves as administrator of the North Side Conservative Club who organized DeSantis’s Friday morning event. (The group has hosted all of the candidates except Trump and long-shot Ryan Binkley.) “Every election is determined by those independent voters, and I think she can bring over a lot of women, independent women and maybe even some Democrats who are not as excited about their candidates.”
DeSantis has argued for months now that Iowans should rally around a candidate who has earned their vote — someone who has shown up on the debate stage and traveled to all of the state’s 99 counties in his bid for the nomination. It’s no wonder then that his campaign and aligned super PACs have spent millions in ads reminding caucus goers that Haley is staking her campaign in New Hampshire, and that she joked that Granite State voters will soon “correct” the Hawkeye State’s result.
But with three days to go, he’s still got work to do.
For Ankeny resident Cheryl Weisheit, an accountant and former co-chair of the Polk County Republican Party, it’s still a coin flip between DeSantis and Haley: “I don’t know and I won’t probably won’t know until Monday.”