Like other prominent Republican leaders, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been subjected to a near-constant barrage of bogus attacks from the mainstream media during his time in public office, with one of the most memorable/bizarre of them being the "60 Minutes" hit piece from 2021 that falsely alleged "racism" and pay to play against DeSantis for the crime of prioritizing seniors for the COVID vaccine.
Not surprisingly, the Democrat/media-driven allegations that DeSantis is a racist have only grown louder ever since, thanks in no small part to DeSantis' commitment to respecting parental rights and his war on Woke Inc., both of which in turn have exposed the real racists, namely many of his critics.
And now, with DeSantis running for president and scaring the hell out of The Usual Suspects in the process, those same claims are being thrown at him again, this time ove how he responded to the Saturday mass shooting that happened at a Jacksonville Dollar General, where three black people were murdered in what law enforcement says was a racially-motivated attack.
As RedState reported earlier, AP reporter Steve Peoples took to both the Twitter machine and the AP news site to launch what in my opinion is one of the most blatantly biased attacks against DeSantis since he was first elected Governor.
To quickly recap, Peoples, hiding behind the voices of black leaders in the state who have previously been critical of DeSantis, incredibly tried to blame DeSantis' "rhetoric" in part for the shooting tragedy, though he gave no examples beyond pointing to bills DeSantis has signed into law.
Further, Peoples mocked DeSantis for slamming the NAACP's ridiculous Florida travel advisory back in May, insinuating that perhaps if DeSantis had taken them seriously then maybe the Jacksonville mass shooting wouldn't have happened. He also pointed to a supposed "increasing appeal" for Republicans "among white supremacists," which in Media World equates to the candidates themselves having the same twisted and sick mindset.
In an update to this story, it was discovered by some conservatives on Twitter including Erick Erickson that the URL for the story was awfully convenient:
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— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) August 29, 2023
Notice the Associated Press's URL for @sppeoples story. "'DeSantis Racist Republican Shooting" https://t.co/fTbdOEXOjK pic.twitter.com/rdQHnuHqNx
While some pointed out in the comments to Erickson's post that SEO might have played a role in the word choices for the URL, I'm not really buying it, especially considering the order of the words ("DeSantis racist Republican"). And even if they should be given the benefit of the doubt that this was really about SEO, why weren't the words "Florida" and "NAACP" also in it?
As a media analyst, I've seen stunts similar to this one pulled too many times over the years to believe this was just a coincidence. In my view, they knew what they were doing, and hoped no one outside of the easily persuadable would notice it. They were wrong.
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