Perhaps because their repeated attempts at painting him as “worse than Trump” failed to put a dent in his popularity, the mainstream media have moved on to their next round of attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
And not surprisingly, they reek of absolute desperation.
First up, we have the New York Times, which on Saturday ran with a story (archived link here) on the one year twenty years ago when DeSantis was a teacher at a private boarding school in Georgia.
From the teaser tweet posted by “reporter” Stephanie Saul on behalf of her NYT colleague Frances Robles, we were supposed to believe some very concerning things happened during his brief time at Darlington School: DeSantis allegedly “partying” with teen high school students (aka being a “cool teacher”) and suggesting the Civil War was fought over economic reasons, not slavery:
Though Robles did interview some former students who said in so many words that DeSantis helped make them better people, the lion’s share of the piece focused on the interviews she did with former students who sounded like they stepped straight out of a DNC casting call:
Danielle Pompey remembers Mr. DeSantis, a Florida native and recent Yale grad, being an outsider like her, a New Yorker with a thick accent to match. But Ms. Pompey, who is Black and was on an academic scholarship, said she felt that Mr. DeSantis treated her worse because of her race.“Mr. Ron, Mr. DeSantis, was mean to me and hostile toward me,” said Ms. Pompey, who graduated in 2003. “Not aggressively, but passively, because I was Black.”She recalled Mr. DeSantis teaching Civil War in a way that sounded to her like an attempt to justify slavery.
But in the very next paragraph we learned that, according to the student, DeSantis was merely playing “devil’s advocate” with his comments about the Civil War:
“Like in history class, he was trying to play devil’s advocate that the South had good reason to fight that war, to kill other people, over owning people — Black people,” she said. “He was trying to say, ‘It’s not OK to own people, but they had property, businesses.’”
The only other “evidence” the Times had for his alleged denial of the reasons for the Civil War was … a parody video made by other students at the time:
The video, which was reviewed by The Times, includes a short snippet in which a voice purporting to be Mr. DeSantis is heard saying: “The Civil War was not about slavery! It was about two competing economic systems. One was in the North. …” while a student dozes in class. (A student voiced the role of Mr. DeSantis, because students did not have any actual footage of him, according to a student who helped put it together.)
We also learned about how abortion allegedly came up once in class, and how one former student of the school said he was troubled when his then-girlfriend told him of DeSantis’ alleged comments:
Abortion was another issue that came up in class at least once, according to Matthew Arne, a former student. Mr. Arne, who was a senior, said students talked among themselves about Mr. DeSantis expressing his strict belief that abortion was wrong. He said it troubled him when his girlfriend, who was in Mr. DeSantis’s history class, told him about what Mr. DeSantis had said. He had grown up in California, he said, and disagreed with Mr. DeSantis’s stance.
Meanwhile, at the Washington Post, we’re apparently supposed to believe that DeSantis, who took on “woke Disney” earlier this year with some success, is a hypocrite or something because he and his wife Casey got married at Disney in 2009 (archived link):
Before he attacked the company, DeSantis — who is up for reelection next week — was a groom walking down the aisle in a Disney wedding. He and his wife, Jill Casey Black, a former anchor at Jacksonville news station WJXT who goes by Casey, wed at Walt Disney World on Sept. 26, 2009.
The Washington Post also informed us how hot on the trail other so-called media outlets were on the story of where DeSantis got married:
Insider first reported the wedding location on Friday, based on accounts from three unnamed people; the publication said 150 people attended. The New York Times reported early last month that the couple’s marriage license listed the location as Lake Buena Vista, a Central Florida city controlled by Disney. The Washington Post has also obtained the marriage license.
For good measure, a former work colleague of Casey DeSantis during her time as an anchor at WJXT told the Post that “I don’t think there was any Mickey presence at all” at the wedding.
If these hit pieces were supposed to turn people off from DeSantis, they did a miserable job:
I don’t know which one of these attacks on DeSantis makes the media look worse – the Disney wedding one, the “cool teacher” one, the Financial Times one about how he supposedly used to deliberately mispronounce “Thai” in college, or the one in which the New York Times actually fretted over DeSantis reportedly texting with Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady.
But what I do know is that they are all previews of the ridiculousness to come from the press in 2024 should DeSantis announce a run for president. It’s like they’re trying to Brett Kavanaugh him now in hopes of derailing him later.
Will it work? Don’t count on it.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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