If you want to know what the media really thinks of a candidate’s chances of becoming president, look at how many and which reporters get assigned to them.
In 2016, for instance, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz all had some of the nation’s top political reporters following them around in packs. Compare that to how the media reacted when Donald Trump announced his candidacy. Outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post sent a single junior reporter or feature writer to watch him descend the golden escalator at Trump Tower.
So the media doesn’t always get it right. It’s a predicament I can empathize with, given I was one of the New York Times reporters first assigned to a Trump rival in 2016 but then later reassigned to help cover him once he became the against-all-odds Republican nominee.
History is repeating itself. In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, outlets initially smothered Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida with reporters and devoted far less coverage to other non-Trump Republican alternatives. One of these reporters was Matt Dixon, formerly of Politico and now with NBC News, whose new book, Swamp Monsters: Trump vs. DeSantis—the Greatest Show on Earth (or at Least in Florida), tells the backstory of the success and setbacks of DeSantis in intimate detail.
When Dixon and his publisher decided the world needed a thorough scrubbing of the conservative governor of Florida, it’s fair to assume they—like the rest of the political and media establishment—believed DeSantis could very well topple Trump. Those circumstances screamed for a book that could explain the meteoric rise of a man who’d been in politics for barely a decade but seemed to have a real shot at becoming the Republican nominee—and possibly even president.
That is not the book Dixon ended up writing. Instead, Swamp Monsters offers a catalogue of anecdotes that helps explain why DeSantis—barring some last-minute upending of the dynamics of the Republican primary—has flamed out with voters, who remain very much in Trump’s thrall.
The reasons are sprinkled throughout Swamp Monsters, starting with Dixon’s own first meeting with DeSantis, in 2011, when the ambitious, young political novice was building out his first campaign for Congress. Dixon describes their encounter as utterly unremarkable: “I sensed from the get-go that DeSantis had no interest in being there but was just checking a box on a list put in front of him by his political handlers.”
Swamp Monsters offers a catalogue of anecdotes that helps explain why DeSantis has flamed out with voters, who remain very much in Trump’s thrall.
Dixon details the personal attributes of DeSantis that were widely known to those close to him all those years before he became a national political figure, but that were somehow largely ignored by the national media as it built DeSantis up as a conservative hero who could loosen Trump’s vise grip on the Republican Party. Aloof. Awkward. No charisma.
“Even to those closest to him, DeSantis came off as a charmless battering ram of a man,” Dixon writes, adding how one former DeSantis adviser was fond of telling people, “Ron DeSantis does not have any old fishing buddies.”
Swamp Monsters recounts DeSantis’s early career days as a prep-school teacher in Georgia who, Dixon claims, told his students that the Civil War was “not about slavery!” Dixon’s DeSantis is a man of myopic ambition who, after getting elected to Congress in 2012, started checking the boxes to endear him to conservative activists and deep-pocketed donors. Ardent defender of Israel? Check. In favor of raising the retirement age for Social Security? Check. Frequent Fox News appearances? Check.
With that kind of restless ambition, Congress was never going to be fulfilling enough. So he set his sights on the Florida governor’s mansion. Dixon walks us through that first campaign for governor in 2018, where the signs that DeSantis wasn’t cut out for the scrutiny and rigor of a national campaign were everywhere.
Right out of the gate, DeSantis put his foot in his mouth when he used a poor choice of words to describe his Black Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, saying that electing Gillum would “monkey this up” in Florida. Democrats pounced on the racist connotation of the phrase. There were awkward interactions with donors and lobbyists, and a flustered first debate performance.
“Even to those closest to him, DeSantis came off as a charmless battering ram of a man.”
One detail about that first gubernatorial campaign that will be new to many is what Dixon describes as the influential role of Matt Gaetz, the boorish Republican congressman and Trump acolyte who has been accused of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and sharing images of nude women on the House floor. Gaetz is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.
Dixon quotes a former campaign aide who recalled seeing Gaetz once at the office “looking like he had been on a three-day bender.” Yet Gaetz, Dixon writes, had the sway to influence appointments in the new DeSantis administration, and DeSantis felt he owed Gaetz a considerable debt.
The relationship with Gaetz was one way DeSantis could ensure he had an ally in Trump world. But Dixon also chronicles how DeSantis worked to ingratiate himself with Trump by becoming one of the former president’s most vocal defenders during his first impeachment.
The sycophancy is head-spinning considering what has become of their relationship today as bitter rivals. DeSantis once even set up something called the Presidential Protection Fund, which solicited donations to “fight back” on Trump’s behalf. However, Dixon also notes how it was self-serving: the solicitation for donations also urged people to contribute to the Florida Republican Party.
DeSantis’s willingness then to prostrate himself for a man who now belittles him and seems likely to send him back to Florida a presidential loser raises real questions about whether DeSantis can continue to be the almost Huey Long–like figure Dixon describes—a governor who’s unassailable and mythically almighty despite his personal flaws.
Dixon cites an operative who notes, in a quote that now feels a bit stale, how conservatives everywhere are saying, “I wish he was my governor.” Maybe. But they are definitely still saying, “I wish Trump was my president.” And until they stop saying that, there can never be a Republican Party of Ron DeSantis.
Jeremy W. Peters is a national correspondent for The New York Times and the author of Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted
