DeSantis Defends Trump: If Newsom were Republican, you guys would have him nailed to a wall

On January 9, 2025, during a gathering of Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis delivered a forceful defense of President-elect Donald Trump when reporters tried to suggest that Trump was politicizing the California wildfires. DeSantis turned the accusation back on the media, arguing that the press would have “nailed to the wall” any Republican governor who presided over the same failures as Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, and cited his own experience with the Surfside Tower collapse as evidence of the media’s pattern of politicizing disasters.

DeSantis Turns the Question Around

The confrontation began when a reporter asked DeSantis whether it was appropriate for a president-elect to be criticizing California’s leadership during an active wildfire crisis. Rather than answering the question as framed, DeSantis immediately redirected the focus onto the media itself.

“It’s pretty appropriate for people in your industry to try to create division and to try to create narratives anytime these things happen,” DeSantis said, reframing the reporter’s question as an example of the very behavior being criticized. “Now you’re not as interested in doing that because Newsom is a ‘D.’”

DeSantis then delivered the line that became the defining moment of the exchange: “If Newsom was a Republican, you guys would go try to — you would have him nailed to the wall for what they’re doing over there.” The comment drew attention to what DeSantis characterized as a fundamental asymmetry in how the media covers Republican versus Democratic officials during crises.

He continued with a broader indictment of press coverage. “You guys sitting in judgment of Donald Trump — excuse me, I think your track record of politicizing these things is very, very bad,” DeSantis said. The Florida governor spoke with the confidence of someone who had navigated multiple natural disasters during his tenure, including hurricanes and other emergencies, and who had developed a keen awareness of how media narratives are constructed around such events.

The Media Double Standard

DeSantis’s argument centered on a specific claim: that the media’s scrutiny of political leaders during natural disasters is applied unevenly based on party affiliation. He noted that in Florida, Republican governors operate under a different set of expectations from the press.

“I know we’ve dealt with it. We just assume in Florida anytime something happens it’s going to be politicized by the media,” DeSantis said. He recalled advice he had received from other Republican governors when he first took office: “When I got elected governor, I was meeting with some of the other Republican governors and what they would say is, hey, if you have a natural disaster, just know media’s coming at you, they’re going to do it. It’s not the same.”

DeSantis argued that the difference in treatment was visible in the California wildfire coverage. Despite the clear failures at the state and local level — including Governor Newsom’s environmental policies, Mayor Bass’s budget cuts to the fire department, and Bass’s absence from the city during a high-risk fire period — the media was directing its sharpest questions not at those officials but at Trump for daring to criticize them.

The Surfside Tower Comparison

To illustrate his point, DeSantis cited his own experience with the Surfside Tower collapse in June 2021, when a residential condominium building in Surfside, Florida, partially collapsed, killing 98 people. The disaster had nothing to do with state government policy, but DeSantis recalled that the media attempted to pin blame on him regardless.

“I remember when we had the Surfside Tower collapse, I had people from the Washington Post trying to blame me for it,” DeSantis said. “Immediately, without having any facts or anything — ‘Oh, he didn’t declare a state of emergency.’” DeSantis noted the absurdity of the criticism, explaining: “First of all, a state of emergency doesn’t mean you can’t respond.”

The Surfside example served DeSantis’s broader argument well. If the media was willing to blame a Republican governor for a building collapse that had no connection to state policy, then the comparative lack of scrutiny directed at Newsom and Bass during a wildfire crisis that was directly connected to their policy decisions represented a glaring double standard.

Karen Bass’s Trip to Africa

DeSantis also targeted LA Mayor Karen Bass directly, highlighting a detail that had been generating significant criticism: Bass had traveled to Africa during a period of elevated wildfire risk.

“That mayor of LA, if that were a Republican mayor, I could only imagine what that would do,” DeSantis said. “I mean, you know the fires are at high risk and you try to go to Africa or wherever she was to go on some type of voyage. You should have been there preparing and doing that, and yet I don’t see a lot of heat being directed in that thing.”

The criticism was pointed. Bass had traveled to Ghana for the inauguration of that country’s president during what was recognized as a high fire-risk period in Los Angeles. When the wildfires erupted, Bass was forced to cut her trip short and return, but the optics of the city’s mayor being on another continent while her city burned were difficult to overcome.

DeSantis used the Bass example to reinforce his central thesis: that the media was holding Trump to a higher standard than the Democratic officials who bore direct responsibility for the disaster response. “I’d like to see some balance on how this is done,” DeSantis said. “You could criticize the president-elect, but I think you also have to hold these other people accountable, and I have not seen that.”

Context: Republican Governors at Mar-a-Lago

DeSantis’s remarks came during a meeting of Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump was hosting the group ahead of his inauguration. The setting meant DeSantis was surrounded by fellow Republican governors who had their own experiences with media coverage of natural disasters, lending additional weight to his claims about uneven treatment.

Trump himself had been vocal in his criticism of Newsom and Bass, posting on social media about the failures of California’s wildfire preparedness and calling for Newsom’s resignation. The media’s framing of Trump’s comments as “politicizing” the disaster rather than holding elected officials accountable was precisely the dynamic DeSantis was pushing back against.

The exchange was widely shared on social media and described as one of DeSantis’s strongest media moments. DeSantis had built a reputation during his governorship for his combative relationship with the press, and his defense of Trump at Mar-a-Lago demonstrated that the two former rivals had aligned their messaging as the new administration prepared to take office.

Key Takeaways

DeSantis told reporters that if Newsom were a Republican, the media “would have him nailed to the wall” for California’s wildfire failures.
He accused the press of having a “very, very bad” track record of politicizing disasters while holding Republican officials to a different standard than Democrats.
DeSantis cited the Surfside Tower collapse as an example, recalling that the Washington Post attempted to blame him despite the disaster having no connection to state policy.
He criticized Mayor Karen Bass for traveling to Africa during a high fire-risk period, saying a Republican mayor would have faced far more intense scrutiny.
DeSantis called for “balance” in coverage, arguing that the media should hold Newsom and Bass accountable rather than focusing on Trump’s criticism of them.

Transcript Highlights

The following is transcribed from the video audio:

It’s pretty appropriate for people in your industry to try to create division and to try to create narratives anytime these things happen. Now you’re not as interested in doing that because Newsom is a D.
If Newsom was a Republican, you guys would go try to — you would have him nailed to the wall for what they’re doing over there.
You guys sitting in judgment of Donald Trump, I mean excuse me, I think your track record of politicizing these things is very, very bad.
I remember when we had the Surfside Tower collapse, I had people from the Washington Post trying to blame me for it. Immediately, without having any facts or anything.
That mayor of LA, if that were a Republican mayor, I could only imagine what that would do. You know the fires are at high risk and you try to go to Africa.
I’d like to see some balance on how this is done. You could criticize the president-elect, but I think you also have to hold these other people accountable.

Full transcript: 388 words transcribed via Whisper AI.