Liberal anti-Trump pundits regularly insist the former president is a threat to democracy and must be kept from a second term at all costs, but many of the most outspoken Trump critics in the media are celebrating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropping out of the race.
DeSantis quit the 2024 Republican presidential contest and endorsed Trump on Sunday, just two days before the New Hampshire primary. Trump, already a heavy favorite to capture the nomination after easily winning the Iowa caucuses, has begun to consolidate most Republican support and is looking for a knockout blow this week against Nikki Haley.
While pundits such as CNN’s Jim Acosta and "The View" co-host Ana Navarro have openly expressed alarm over Trump, they weren’t particularly upset when one of his most serious challengers threw in the towel after a disappointing Iowa finish.
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Author David Marcus said the reaction from prominent liberals proves they simply have an issue with populism. DeSantis ran for governor of Florida in 2018 as a Trump acolyte and has often been derided in the media for his style of governance.
"The left views DeSantis as a version of Trump, so they were never going to see the governor winning in a positive light, even if he thwarted their biggest bogeyman, which shows, it’s not really Trump they fear most, it’s populism," Marcus told Fox News Digital.
Navarro, who has called Trump a racist, criminal and threat to the country's foundations, said Monday on "The View" that when she first heard the DeSantis news, she celebrated by throwing her hands in the air and cheering.
"Drag brunches and Disney are alive, and the DeSantis presidential campaign is DEAD," Navarro wrote on Instagram. "Hallelujah!"
CNN’s Acosta was among the faces of the mainstream media’s anti-Trump resistance during his administration. Acosta regularly clashed with the former president and members of his administration during press conferences and other events, and he often lapsed into editorializing despite having an ostensibly nonpartisan job. Since he took a weekend anchoring position at CNN after Biden took office, he has been openly left-wing in his stances and once said Trump was an "insult to clowns."
But Sunday, when Trump’s top rival dropped out, Acosta decided to applaud the occasion with Disney-themed jabs at the Florida governor.
"DeSantis spent a lot of time in the run up to the primaries and caucuses getting underway, going after woke-ism, going after targets like Walt Disney. And at the end, he went from Space Mountain to It’s a Small World… it just did not work," Acosta snarked.
Acosta also suggested GOP voters want the "drama" that comes with Trump.
The Lincoln Project, a fiercely anti-Trump group that reviles the former president as a dangerous authoritarian but suggested in 2021 it wanted Trump to be the 2024 nominee anyway, also mocked DeSantis on X.
"America's Sweetheart Ron DeSantis is hanging up his heels and suspending his presidential campaign. Take a look back with us at his spectacular disaster of a campaign. Laugh at what was, enjoy what could have been," the group posted to accompany a montage of unflattering DeSantis clips.
Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, another vehemently anti-Trump voice in the press, took to social media with his reaction to DeSantis stepping aside.
"Ahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahaha," Hasan wrote on X to caption news of DeSantis suspending his campaign.
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who left a cozy job at ESPN in 2020, so he’d be free to criticize Trump on YouTube, called DeSantis "an utter trainwreck of a human being."
The New York Times, which endorsed Biden in 2020, called the end of DeSantis’ campaign the culmination of a "spectacular implosion" in its report.
NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck believes anti-Trump pundits want to continue "financial grift operations" that were so profitable from 2016 through the 2020 election.
"Liberal journalists and pundits are ebullient with Ron DeSantis dropping out of the race because they know that, with Trump as the nominee, their financial grift operations can continue unabated," Houck told Fox News Digital, noting that many prominent reporters such as Acosta have written books critical of Trump.
"Acosta is only a semi-household name because of his cartoonish antics during the Trump years. Before that, no one knew who this guy was. Commentators like Ana Navarro were third-rate pundits on talk shows where they needed a Republican to serve as a doormat for the two or three liberals," Houck said.
Houck recalled then-CBS executive Les Moones admitting in 2016 that Trump entering the race was "damn good for CBS," and said the notion remains true for much of the media.
"With the Biden years having seen widespread cuts and shutterings in the liberal, establishment press, a Trump romping has them weak in the knees at the prospect of their coffers refilling with sweet, sweet cash from terrified ‘resistance’ types, fearful a Trump presidency will be a dictatorship and end with them in labor camps," Houck said.
"If DeSantis had continued or become the nominee, one can't say definitively what would have happened to the press," he added. "But, I feel safe in predicting that DeSantis's effectiveness in sparring with journalists over the years and control on his social media platforms would have frustrated them until they spontaneously combusted into yellowed pieces of newsprint."
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Houck’s colleague, NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham feels "journalists have used Trump for years to paint themselves in the most heroic colors as pro-democracy," when they're actually just pro-Democrat.
"If DeSantis wanted to be Trump without the baggage, the reporters just feared a smarter, more effective, less cartoonish Trump. They were glad to get rid of him to stick to the original formula they love to confront," Graham told Fox News Digital.
"Is there anything less self-aware than Jim Acosta reporting ‘it seems like Republican voters want Trump and the drama?’ They all thrive on Trump and the drama," Graham continued. "They are the dramatists, and they can't stop writing this drama."
Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie, Lindsay Kornick, Hanna Panreck and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.
