DeSantis admits he picked the wrong media strategy to kick off his presidential campaign

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis now says he had the wrong media strategy for months.
• DeSantis said he should have "blanketing" cable news instead of largely sticking to conservative media.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is ready to look into the mirror when it comes to his presidential run that once held so much promise and now appears to be near its end.

In particular, DeSantis said it was a mistake to kick off his 2024 run with an insular media strategy that ceded significant ground to former President Donald Trump.

" I came in not really doing as much media," DeSantis told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. "I should have just been blanketing. I should have gone on all the corporate shows. I should have gone on everything. I started doing that as we got into the end of the summer, and we did it. But we had an opportunity, I think, to come out of the gate and do that and reach a much broader folk."

It's likely the Florida governor and his team will eventually have more regrets. DeSantis was once Trump's best-positioned primary foe. Now, DeSantis didn't win a single county in the Iowa caucuses despite making a point of visiting all 99 of them. DeSantis has argued that his distant second-place finish in Iowa was strong enough to press on, but it's unclear how the map will get more favorable for him.

DeSantis only began to venture beyond the conservative media ecosystem as his campaign began to struggle over the summer. His initial strategy led to an endless string of appearances on Fox News.

It's worthing point out that DeSantis' approach dovetailed with how he grew his national brand during the COVID-19 pandemic and even how he wooed Trump to offer a critical endorsement during DeSantis' first gubernatorial run. But even DeSantis now has soured on the right-wing media space.

"They don't hold him accountable because they're worried about losing viewers, and they don't want to have the ratings go down," the Florida governor recently told reporters about how conservative media treats Trump, which DeSantis deemed a "Praetorian Guard."