Ron DeSantis truly is the gold standard for Republicans: a natural-born fighter, he picks his battles carefully, plays to win, and never, ever apologizes. Part of his winning strategy also includes freezing out the establishment media, and, boy, they are really rankled about that.

Semafor, a new lefty media offering helmed by former Buzzfeed and NYT journo Ben Smith, the guy who gave the ill-advised green light to publish the unfounded Steele dossier back in 2016, recently published a piece lamenting the fact that DeSantis has summarily dismissed their ilk in favor of right-leaning outlets. Writer Max Tani notes, “Over the last year, DeSantis has given just a handful of interviews. Almost all of them have been with Fox News primetime or morning hosts or major conservative podcasters.”

Boo-freaking-hoo. Why in the world would he take time from his busy schedule to talk with the likes of Semafor or The View or CNN, some of the most dishonest brokers in modern media? Ben Smith is an activist masquerading as a journalist, as this car crash of an interview with Tucker Carlson clearly shows. The Ben Smiths and Max Tanis of the world aren’t interested in honest dialogue; they exist to shill for radical leftist causes and have no intention of giving Republicans fair coverage. And Ron DeSantis is 100 percent correct to ignore them. They’ve earned it.

One of the things that seems to especially irk Semafor’s Tani is the fact that DeSantis will talk to independent media outlets like the Florida Standard and Florida’s Voice, two right-leaning sites covering news and politics in Florida. This is bad, apparently, because the outlets are funded by conservatives. Gasp! Get the smelling salts! Bring in the fainting couch! The leftist-funded media is distraught to discover that the right also funds media ventures.

As usual, DeSantis staffer Christina Pushaw gets it right:

When your options are rabidly partisan legacy media, Democrat activists posing as a Capitol Press Corps, a pay4play Lincoln Project blog, and “new media” like Semafor (allegedly owned by Sam Bankman-Fried), of course it makes sense to cultivate an alternative. https://t.co/yZOhxTkaIr

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) December 5, 2022

Fox News contributor Joe Concha points out that Semafor has absolutely no moral high ground to stand on, writing:

“Is there a bigger joke than Semafor right now? So if we get this straight… DeSantis won’t appear on so-called mainstream programs like, you know, The View, and that means he’s freezing ‘media’ out? SBF can’t be happy with his big investment here. How big is that again?” Fox News contributor Joe Concha wrote.

SBF, of course, is Sam Bankman-Fried, the wild-hair crypto shyster who defrauded investors out of billions of dollars, dollars that made their way into Democrat bank accounts and helped to fund — you guessed it — Semafor. SBF was trying to buy influence in the media, and Ben Smith was more than happy to take the tainted funds.

Steve Krakauer, a former CNN journalist who now works in conservative media, framed it this way, “Every time SBF gets an opportunity to reshape the narrative, the media that allowed everyday people to have their money stolen by this fraud by looking the other way while he accrued wealth and power drift further from culpability themselves.”

For a young company, having just launched in October, Semafor is certainly making a name for itself as political and corporate shills. Krakauer, doing great actual journalism in his “Fourth Watch” newsletter, notes Semafor recently accepted a big ad buy from Chevron, which should almost certainly call into question their leftist climate change bona fides. Semafor’s former “climate editor” — who lasted in the role all of five weeks — has an enlightening Twitter thread here.

Of course Ron DeSantis won’t talk to these people — they are “journo-activists,” bought and paid for by the same people and corporate interests that are quite literally burning down our country. More Republicans and conservatives should follow DeSantis’s lead and shun these phonies; there is nothing to be gained playing by the left’s dishonest rules.