The current undisputed Trump successor (should there be a need for one), Ron DeSantis, is having difficulty with one of the world’s largest news organizations, due to his press secretary’s alleged harassing of an AP reporter. Indeed, Twitter has suspended Christina Pushaw’s account for 12 hours. She is obviously the press secretary of interest.

This is the summary of the story as reported by AP:

She had objected to Tuesday’s story by AP’s Tallahassee, Florida-based reporter Brendan Farrington, which pointed out that one of DeSantis’ multimillion-dollar donors invests in a company making the COVID-19 treatment drug Regeneron. DeSantis has been touting the monoclonal antibody treatment throughout the state.

That story above, the original report that upset the press secretary, is a serious and threatening story because it’s the type of allegation (likely factual if reported by the AP) that not only gets one out of the presidential race but possibly also in prison.

Pusha didn’t react well:

In another tweet, she wrote that if Farrington didn’t change the story, she would “put you on blast.” She also retweeted a message that said “Light. Them. Up.” in reference to the AP.

That caused Farrington to be threatened and fearful:

 Farrington tweeted that he had received online threats and hate messages about the story. “For your sake, I hope government doesn’t threaten your safety. I’ll be fine, I hope. Freedom. Just please don’t k*ll me.”

My god. Farrington declined to be interviewed because reporters don’t want to be part of a story. But the AP was apoplectic because they don’t want to be part of the story, either, and yet they weren’t going to let their reporter hang in the wind:

Brian Carovillano, AP’s vice president and managing editor, said Pushaw’s tweets were particularly egregious because she’s a public servant whose job it is to work with the press.

“There’s pushback, which we fully accept and is a regular facet of being a political reporter or any kind of reporter, and there’s harassment,” Carovillano said. “This is not pushback, it’s harassment. It’s bullying. It’s calling out the trolls at somebody who is just doing his job and it’s putting him and his family at risk.”

Pshaw said defensively:

As soon as Farrington told me he received threats, I tweeted that nobody should be threatening anyone, that is completely unacceptable,” she said. “I also urged him to report any threats to police.”

Even if we did believe her, which we don’t, it was too little too late. This is a professional press secretary, you don’t get a “do over” on issues like this.

There is much more backstory here, suffice it to say, it the ball is in DeSantis’s court and what he decides to do is entirely up to him. That is his problem.

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