COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) slammed the news media for collaborating with the federal government rather than covering it, amplifying former President Donald Trump's complaints about reporters.
"The media in this country, they used to say that they speak truth to power," DeSantis told a crowd Wednesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa. "But now they're really the protectors of the administrative state. They get leaks to them and they work together, so they're going to defend the current power arrangements in Washington."
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During the event, DeSantis and his wife Casey also recalled a congressional delegation trip they took when the governor was a lawmaker, during which Florida's first lady organized to bring back water from the Sea of Galilee to baptize their future children.
DeSantis campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo previewed how the governor’s four-day, 12-city tour through the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina will introduce his vision for America to the public after describing the country as being in "decline" and in need of a "Great American Comeback" in his announcement video last week. The campaign also announced on Tuesday that DeSantis will return to Iowa Saturday for Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) annual "Roast and Ride" fundraiser.
"I wish the elites in Washington, D.C., would take a page out of the Iowa playbook, but instead they have ignored what works and they continue to plunge this nation into the abyss," the governor said Tuesday during his in-person campaign launch in Clive, Iowa. "These elites are not enacting an agenda to represent us. They are imposing their agenda on us via the federal government, via corporate America, and via our own education system, all for their benefit and all to our detriment."
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"My job as a leader is to put the interests and the jobs of the people I represent ahead of protecting my own political hide," he added. "We had some tough going politically for a while, we were getting hammered, and lo and behold, when you do the right thing, regardless of polls or regardless of wherever the wind's blowing, people appreciate you. They know when you stood up for them when it's not easy and you do it, that's when they go to war for you."
Trump has an average 31 percentage point advantage over DeSantis, according to RealClearPolitics's aggregation of very early primary polls, though the governor raised a record $8.2 million on the first day of his campaign.