Anderson Cooper needles DeSantis for blaming bad poll numbers on media

CNN host Anderson Cooper mocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) Monday for blaming the media for his slumping presidential campaign.

Cooper said DeSantis is “blaming the messenger” as recent campaign polls show the governor far behind chief primary opponent former President Trump. A new poll Monday found that Trump has a 20-point lead over DeSantis in Florida, his home state.

“The media does not want me to be the nominee,” DeSantis said Sunday on Fox News. “I think that’s very, very clear. Why? Because they know I’ll beat [President] Biden. But even more importantly, they know I will actually deliver on all these things. It’s pretty clear that the media does not want me to be the candidate.”

Cooper did not buy DeSantis’s explanation.

“It’s the media’s fault?” Cooper said. “To be clear, the governor almost exclusively appears on friendly conservative outlets. And even there, as you can see, he doesn’t seem happy with the questions.”

“As for his claim it’s the media who don’t want him to defeat Donald Trump, polling shows that it’s actually a plurality of Republican voters who don’t,” he added.

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a Trump critic long before leaving Congress and joining CNN, said DeSantis is taking a page out of Trump’s playbook.

“Never take accountability for anything,” he said of DeSantis’s strategy. “The media is an easy target.”

“He made a decision early on that he was going to try to be a younger version of Donald Trump. Tactically, it’s probably not a bad decision to make, except that Donald Trump is running again, and nobody can out-Trump Donald Trump,” Kinzinger added.

CNN commentator Van Jones called it “sad,” noting that the media’s reaction to DeSantis was initially quite positive. And in the weeks after the 2022 midterm elections, some polling showed DeSantis beating Trump in hypothetical head-to-head polls.

“He got the biggest buildup, he got the biggest support, it was nuts. It was DeSantis-mania for months. Then he launches his campaign and it’s a little [deflating],” Jones said.

Recent national polls show Trump with a 30-point lead over DeSantis on average. Last week, a DeSantis PAC spokesperson called Trump the “runaway frontrunner” and said that the DeSantis campaign is “way behind.”