Topic: Media Research Center
Where there are Republican presidential candidates, the Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigade will be there too -- and it was active during the first debate, giving him treatment above and beyond the defnse it gave to the debate in general. A pre-debate post by Clay Waters complained that the New York Times pointed out that in previous debates, Ron DeSantis has been "known to bristle under criticism. His opponents will hope to score viral moments highlighting his defensiveness and casting him as awkward and robotic." Then came defense mode: "Reading the Times’ coverage of DeSantis, one could be amazed how this bumbler won two elections for governor of the third-largest state -- the last by almost 20 percentage points."The MRC's first post-debate post was press release-style DeSantis stenography courtesy of Tom Olohan:
George Soros did not attend the Republican Presidential Primary, but that didn’t stop DeSantis from airing out the billionaire’s dirty laundry.
Republican 2024 presidential candidates duked it out on the debate stage Wednesday, each trying to convince Americans that he or she has what it takes to resurrect the economy, fix the border crisis and can bring America forward. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis touted his record of going after George Soros for spending money to elect radical pro-crime district attorneys in Florida. "These hollowed out cities, this is a symptom of America’s decline. And one of the biggest reasons is because you have George Soros funding these radical left-wing district attorneys. They get into office and say they're not going to prosecute crimes they disagree with.”
Kevin Tober whined about more criticism of DeSantis in the second post-debate post:
Just minutes into MSNBC’s post-GOP debate analysis late Wednesday night co-hosts Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, and Alex Wagner declared Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis one of the night’s losers.
“Can I just say something? I think DeSantis was absolutely terrible,” Maddow proclaimed as if anyone on the Republican side of the aisle cared what she had to say.
Wallace chimed in to pile on: “What’s happening is that he has lost the fancy donors who were like DeSantis is gonna answer our Trump coup plotter problem.” “No, he’s not! He didn't do anything tonight to change that,” Wallace added.
[...]
Wagner jumped in to agree with Maddow and Wallace and proclaimed DeSantis is “so bad at politics.”
She said this despite presumably knowing that DeSantis won reelection in Florida by 20 percentage points.
When the New York Times dropped a story during the debate on DeSantis' college years at Yale, pointing out that he is "rail[ing] against his own Ivy League degrees while milking them for access and campaign cash," Waters returned to complain:
As the opening round of the 2024 presidential campaign kicked off Wednesday night with the first Republican debate, Tuesday’s lead New York Times story was a 7,500-word investigative epic by Nicholas Confessore, Times reporter and MSNBC political analyst, on the highest polling Republican on the lectern that night.
The mission was clear from the headline: 2024 presidential candidate, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, was an elitist hypocrite. “How Ron DeSantis Joined the ‘Ruling Class’ -- and Turned Against It,” it read.
[...]
Confessore relayed some lurid details of the “hell week” held by DeSantis’s old fraternity which, if applied in nonpartisan fashion by the press, would surely embarrass a good number of sitting politicians. He uncovered a bogus insight into DeSantis’s psyche:
….Today, some of the former brothers and pledges regard Mr. DeSantis’s behavior as foreshadowing a comfort with power -- and with using it to bully others.
Waters didn't explain why that observation was "bogus," given DeSantis' clear bullying behavior toward Disney and the LGBTQ community in Florida.
