I’ll be honest, as much as I like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, I didn’t expect to be writing on him half-a-dozen times in the past several days. Yet, the media continue to make him a story. As I wrote yesterday, there was a major freak-out involving his non-mask usage while sealed in a glass bubble at the Super Bowl. DeSantis managed the perfect response to that, essentially telling the hand-wringing reporters to go jump in a lake (see Legendary: Ron DeSantis Has the Perfect Response for the Mask Karens). Media outlets also lost it the day before over people being outside without masks in anticipation for the big game.

This morning, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough took to the airwaves to launch yet another attack on Florida’s chief executive, and I think it says a lot more about the media than DeSantis himself.

The media is legitimately terrified of Ron DeSantis because they know that he has all the upside that Trump had X10 and has virtually none of the downside. That is the only reason that they continue to lie and spread this bullshit. https://t.co/wE6Q7Rpuof

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) February 9, 2021

Ryan has this pegged right, and it’s a point I made as recently as yesterday in an article, but we’ll get to that in a second.

Objectively, everything said in the above clip is false. DeSantis has not fouled anything up. His state is in the bottom half of the country in COVID death rates. He didn’t keep his state locked down, nor did he continue to impose pointless mask mandates. Because of that, Florida’s economy has boomed while places like California wither on the vine with worse results all the way around despite their oppressive mitigation strategies. In short, Scarborough is simply lying when he claims that DeSantis has done anything other than one of the best jobs in the country at handling the virus, especially when you consider all factors such as causing unrelated deaths and the economy.

Yet, Scarborough made this intellectual vapid attack anyway. The reason why is incredibly simple, yet also incredibly cynical. These people are terrified of Ron DeSantis because he represents all the positives of Trump without the negatives that drove away much of the squishy middle. He’s a true bridge candidate that takes doesn’t take crap from anyone, including the media, while also being just disciplined enough to always have the upper hand. Further, he’s not in Washington, which means he’s actually getting things done along the way to build his record. MSNBC doesn’t want someone like DeSantis to gain steam.

Ironically, their continual lying about him leads to right-wing media writing on DeSantis more and more, though, which only brightens his star further. In short, their attempts to destroy him are only making him stronger.