Q&A of the Day – Did the 60 Minutes hit piece on Governor DeSantis make him stronger? Part 2
Bottom Line: We’re all familiar with the saying that it’s best to under promise and over deliver. Throughout the pandemic Governor DeSantis has taken the occasion, from time to time, to point out inequities in the reporting by news media at the local, state and national level. Each time he’s carefully done it by supporting his claims with facts. Like pointing out for example, that Florida’s had fewer cases and deaths per capita than most states – including states favorably covered like New York and California. At that point there’s really nothing else news media can do to further that narrative. Instead, they try what they think are clever new ways to advance horse poo narratives. Like for example the recent report that five states account for much of the recent surge in cases. In that report Florida is shown to be third highest for an increase in new cases. Well guess what? Florida’s the third largest state. What that report shows is that Florida’s experienced an increase in cases that’s simply consistent with a state of our size. But they don’t provide that context which would illustrate nothing extraordinary, or even newsworthy, has happened in Florida. But anyway, that’s what they’re forced to resort to. It’s far from a full-frontal attack on Governor DeSantis’s policies and handling of the pandemic. And it’s within this context and aspect of this conversation that the answer to your question is potentially found.
Time after time national news media has attempted to impugn Governor DeSantis’s pandemic policy which has been the 7th least restrictive in the country. Every time they thought they had him, commonly by citing his policy and commentary on his policy and contrasting it with so-called “experts” who would say he was wrong... DeSantis was proved right. The agenda in their reporting was obvious but it was also on the periphery of a bigger national conversation regarding the best way to manage the pandemic. What CBS News and 60 Minutes did, took it to a whole other level.
The CBS News 60 Minutes crew came to Florida with one clear objective. Go prove DeSantis engaged in pay-for-play vaccines. When they got here, they realized they’d been lied to by the Nikki Fried’s and Charlie Crist’s of the world and that not only did Governor DeSantis not engage in pay-for-play vaccines but that he made the decisions he made at the specific requests of locally elected Democrats. At this point, and likely emboldened by the number of times they’d lied about Trump and gotten away with it, they decided to go all the way. Produce and edit a show which only reflects the narrative, damage DeSantis and move on. What they counted on is a, he said/she said from Governor DeSantis that they could have ignored the same way they did when Trump would point out their false reporting. But what they discounted were honest Democrats like Florida Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz and Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner standing up to the lies of CBS News. That along with the fact that Ron DeSantis is a Harvard educated attorney and military officer who has his facts in order and is always ready to present his case. The result is that CBS News and the 60 Minutes crew were so exposed for who and what they are that even CNN, to attempt to retain credibility with their base, reported on their falsehoods and misreporting. Still does this benefit Governor DeSantis in the context of being a 2024 presidential contender? I’ll specifically answer it in the third part of my Q&A of the day.
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