Ron DeSantis admitted on Thursday that he made a serious miscalculation by refusing to do interviews as part of his campaign for the 2024 GOP Republican presidential nomination.
DeSantis finished second to Donald Trump at the Iowa Caucus, but ahead of rival Nikki Haley. With the New Hampshire primary coming up on Tuesday, he admitted he should have done far more press.
“Presidential campaigns are a lot about media,” DeSantis told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. He admitted that his personal “on the ground” approach to voters didn’t yield the results he was hoping for.
“I came in not really doing as much media. I should have just been blanketing. I should have gone on all the corporate shows. I should have gone on everything,” said DeSantis.
In July 2023, after Politico ran an article about his campaign called “Failure to Launch,” DeSantis told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that the media was biased against him. “Maria, these are narratives. The media does not want me to be the nominee. I think that’s very, very clear. Why? Because they know I’ll beat Biden,” he said at the time.
As DeSantis said to Hewitt on Thursday, he began doing more interviews “as we got into the end of the summer,” but that he blew the chance to “reach a much broader folk” early on.
He added, “Now, I’m everywhere. I mean, I’ll show up wherever.” He said he was “committed to do the debate tonight on WMUR and ABC in New Hampshire,” before the event was canceled due to bad weather.
He did make it to CNN’s town hall on Wednesday, however, saying he’s the only candidate who’s doing that at the moment. “I’ve done these televised town halls. I go out and take questions from voters. You know, I think that’s good. I’m the only one that’s not at this point running a basement campaign. Biden’s running a basement campaign. Trump won’t debate, won’t take questions from voters. And now, Haley won’t debate and won’t take questions from voters.”
He originally launched his campaign in May 2023 via a glitchy Twitter spaces event with Elon Musk.
