'Failed miserably': Analyst fact-checks DeSantis’ 'here’s what I should have done' revelation
21 January 2024
CNN's Victor Blackwell spoke with journalist, television and radio host Errol Louis Sunday morning about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' future in the race against Nikki Haley and the predicted winner of the GOP nomination — former President Donald Trump.
Mentioning that the governor has an event in New Hampshire Sunday, Blackwell played a clip from DeSantis' interview earlier this week on the conservative Hugh Hewitt Show, suggesting that his campaign failed to do well due to lack of media strategy.
In the clip, the Republican leader said, "I came in not really doing as much media. I should have just been blanketing. I should have gone on all of the corporate shows and go on everything. I started doing that as we got into the end of the summer and we did it. But we had an opportunity I think to come out of the game and do that and reach a much broader folk."
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Blackwell emphasized, "So, we're in the 'Here's what I should have done' part of the campaign," asking Louis, "How much of his slide is attributable to the media strategy or is it far more than that?"
Louis replied, "Well, he's trying to act as if 'Oh I forgot to talk to the media.' No, it was contempt for the media. It was Ron DeSantis at every opportunity saying he hated the mainstream media, that the mainstream media out of touch with his base and real Americans and he was going to snub mainstream media and ignore them. He didn't need them, so forth and so on. It wasn't a logistical kind of an issue. It was an ideological one. And on that, as on so many different issues, Ron DeSantis has been proven to have been wrong — that the path to the White House did not lie in dividing dividing Americans and attacking mainstream media and Disney and attacking whatever he called woke and all of that kind of stuff. It flopped and it failed miserably. He's not going to show up in New Hampshire. He's probably going to fold his tent after South Carolina."
Blackwell then asked, whether Louis believes the Florida leader will stay in the race for another month if his polling in South Carolina is low.
"He has told reporters that if it doesn't work out for him in South Carolina, it is all over," Louis emphasized.
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When Blackwell mentioned that former GOP candidate Chris Christie said DeSantis stay in the race at least until the GOP convention in July, Louis replied, "Yeah, right. Okay. We'll see about that. It's a very expensive proposition to continue running for president when you have no hope of winning a sizable number of delegates. Now, somebody like Nikki Haley could, if she wanted to, try to do what [US senator and former 2016 GOP presidential candidate] Ted Cruz (R-TX) did back in 2016, Victor, which is wrap the anti-Trump forces and say, 'Look, it's important, even if we can't win the nomination outright, to go into the convention with a sizable amount of delegates or maybe even enough to prevent him from getting an outright majority.' If they could make that case, it's not Ron DeSantis who is the anti-Trump candidate."
Watch the video below or at this link.