DeSantis accuses press of trying to 'milk' January 6 attack on the Capitol: 'This is their Christmas'

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the national media was "obsessed" with January 6.
• He said Florida voters were more focused on issues such as inflation and gas prices.

WEST PALM BEACH — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday accused journalists of having an "obsession" with the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

"This is their Christmas: January 6," the Republican governor said, specifically mentioning media organizations based in Washington and New York. "They are going to take this and milk this for anything they can to be able to smear anyone who ever supported Donald Trump."

DeSantis was appearing at a press conference about COVID-19 testing roughly 10 miles from former President Donald Trump's private Mar-a-Lago club. Asked by Insider to comment about the Capitol attack, as well as if he planned to speak with Trump on Thursday, DeSantis answered by calling comparisons to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack an "insult" to first responders.

He also accused the press of spending little time covering the 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball practice outside Washington DC when "a Bernie Sanders guy" shot and wounded House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and several others.

"That was like a one-day, two day story," he said. "That was not something that the Capitol-based press wanted to talk about. Why? Because it totally undercut their preferred narratives."

"January 6 allows them to create narratives that are negative about people that supported Donald Trump," he added. DeSantis served in the House from January 2013 to September 2017 and played in the baseball game that year following the shooting, which did receive widespread press coverage at the time.

DeSantis, who is up for re-election in 2022 and seen as a front-runner should he make a 2024 Republican presidential bid, did not answer the question about whether he intended to speak with Trump on the January 6 anniversary. His press conference was called to talk about how the state would be distributing COVID-19 testing to long-term care facilities at a rehabilitation center in West Palm Beach.

DeSantis said Florida voters were more focused on gas prices, inflation, education, and crime.

"There is an obsession with this among the DC-New York journalist class, and I think it's because it allows them to spin a narrative that they want to spin," he said.

DeSantis accused the national press of contributing to "damaged trust in institutions" through their coverage of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton.

"It's not something that I've been concerned about in my job here," DeSantis said of January 6, "because quite frankly it's not something that most Floridians have been concerned about."

While he said it was important to "hold people accountable" for trying to obstruct a proceeding or for rioting, he cited a common talking point about Trump backers that no one has been charged to date by the federal government for inciting an insurrection.

"I think it's going to end up being just a politicized Charlie Foxtrot today," he said. "I don't expect anything good to come out of anything that Pelosi and the gang are doing. I don't expect anything from the corporate press to be enlightening. I think it's going to be nauseating, quite frankly, and I'm not going to do it."