DeSantis on reports of stalled 2024 campaign: ‘Media does not want me to be the nominee’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a 2024 presidential candidate, said Sunday that he thinks the media doesn’t want him to be his party’s nominee as reports suggest his presidential campaign is stalled.

“The media does not want me to be the nominee. I think that’s very, very clear. Why? Because they know I will beat Biden. But, even more importantly, they know I will actually deliver on all these things,” DeSantis said in response to such a report on “Sunday Morning Futures.” 

“We will stop the invasion at the border. We will take on the drug cartels. We will curtail the administrative state. We will get spending under control. We will do all the things that they don’t want to see done, and so they’re going to continue doing the type of narrative,” he said. 

The Florida governor was responding to a Saturday headline in Politico Playbook: “Failure to launch — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign to topple Donald Trump has stalled.”

He shrugged off the reporting, saying, “These are narratives.” 

Former President Trump, who is running for another four years in the White House, is steadily polling at the front of a field of a dozen GOP candidates, but DeSantis has consistently polled as the top contender behind Trump.

DeSantis Sunday touted his reelection victory in Florida, noting that “a few months before the election, I had media saying that somehow my reelection campaign was stalling, that we weren’t doing anything.” He also highlighted his recent fundraising. 

“If you look at what was reported, it was about $150 million, and that hasn’t even been deployed yet. So we have got a long way to go. I’m looking forward to being able to participate in the debates, but this is not something that I ever expected to just snap fingers and, all of a sudden, you win seven months before anything happens,” the candidate said.