Fox News host Neil Cavuto hurled a slew of “piercing” media criticisms at Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday, adding that Sen. Marco Rubio’s support for former President Donald Trump must have “hurt” the Florida governor.
DeSantis faces an uphill battle for the Republican nomination after devoting all of his resources to Iowa, where he finished a distant second to Trump, and polls show him trailing former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Trump in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
On Sunday, the day before the Iowa Caucuses, Rubio endorsed Trump over the state’s governor.
“It’s easy to pile on someone when they’re having hard polling times as you are, governor,” Cavuto said. “But the headlines are piercing … You’re a human being. You’re seeing and hearing all of that. And then Marco Rubio, your state senator, who says ‘I’m supporting Donald Trump.’ I mean, that’s gotta hurt.”
Cavuto cited an NBC article titled “Ron DeSantis is in Survival Mode as Nikki Haley Battles Trump in New Hampshire,” a New York Times article titled “Shake-Up by a Desperate DeSantis Opens Wider Path for Haley in New Hampshire,” and a Politico opinion piece titled “The DeSantis Team Ran the Worst Campaign in History.”
Read: Florida Gov. DeSantis To Challenge Ruling In Suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren Case
“No, I mean that’s just part of the business,” DeSantis responded. “I can take the arrows. I don’t care. I remember during Covid, they were saying all that about me and worse because I actually was fighting against Fauci and fighting against the lockdowns. And they said that I was dead, they said that I was making a mistake and the rest is history. Now nobody looks back at that and criticizes me. They pretend like they were on my side. So some of this stuff is those folks have been writing that stuff for years and years. That’s just the nature of it.”
The Florida governor received 21.2% of the vote in Iowa and is currently polling at 6% in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary on Tuesday.
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