Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is trying to reboot his presidential campaign amid stagnant poll numbers and fundraising.
DeSantis debuted an interesting new strategy.
And what Ron DeSantis just said about January 6 will leave Donald Trump’s jaw on the ground.
DeSantis drew the scorn of conservatives by initially agreeing with the media, the Democrat Party and the January 6 committee that Donald Trump bore responsibility for the events at the Capitol.
Ron DeSantis says President Trump should have “come out more forcefully” on J6 protestors.
This is who he is. Cut from the same cloth as Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney. Playing right into the Marxist Democrat’s hands. pic.twitter.com/uFyQxUHhOm
— Karoline Leavitt (@kleavittnh) July 18, 2023
The Florida governor built his brand rejecting media narratives that establishment Republicans would accept as fact so conservatives were stunned to see DeSantis echo a storyline the media concocted about January 6 that Democrats used to attack Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.
But given a chance to clean up his remarks DeSantis leapt at the chance.
In an interview with comedian Russell Brand, DeSantis forcefully condemned the media and Democrat Party falsehood that Donald Trump incited his supporters to stage an insurrection and attempt to overthrow the U.S. government.
DeSantis explained that the media only latched on to this baseless assertion about an insurrection to advance the political agenda of the Democrat Party.
“I think it is ridiculous how much money they pumped in for the Capitol Police. This was not an insurrection. These were people that were there to attend a rally and protest. It devolved into a riot, but the idea that this was a plan to somehow overthrow the government of the United States is not true and it is something the media has spun up to try to get mileage out of it and use it for partisan and political aims. I know there were a lot of people there who were just there, and they didn’t have any designs on doing anything,” DeSantis stated.
Few Trump supporters were armed and the only person to discharge a firearm that day was the Capitol Hill police officer who killed unarmed female Trump supporter and Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt.
DeSantis added that no one has been able to present any evidence of an actual insurrection to overthrow the U.S. government as what really happened that day was a rally that got out of hand.
Instead, DeSantis believes the media is following the playbook of repeating a falsehood so many times that the liberals in the press hope everyone else will just accept it.
“We just have to be honest about it. If somebody is honestly doing an insurrection against the U.S. government, then prove that is the case and I’ll be happy to accept it. But all you’re showing me is there were a lot of protesters there and it ended up devolving in ways that were unfortunate of course, but to say they were seditionists is just wrong,” DeSantis concluded.
DeSantis knew he made a mistake with his previous January 6 comments that played into the media’s hands.
A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll from last December showed 73 percent of Republicans think too much has been made of January 6.
If DeSantis is going to claw back into the race, he knows he cannot afford to alienate nearly three-quarters of the GOP base.
So he took the interview with Brand as the opportunity to offer a clearer version of his thoughts on the matter and make sure GOP voters knew he did not fall for a media storyline.