Last Updated on November 9, 2023
Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis gave his first and reportedly his only Spin Room post-debate interview with the mainstream news network NBC News instead of with independent or conservative media. Additionally, Ron DeSantis praised NBC News for their production of the third Republican primary debate.
None of the debates have featured Trump, and this third installment in the Junior Varsity Debate series netted the show’s lowest ratings yet. The debate averaged only 4.9 million viewers on NBC on Wednesday night, according to Nielsen numbers, and the Republican Party lost to both the CMA country music awards on ABC and Survivor on CBS in the 18-to-49 demographic.
At the 7:50 Mark in WMAL host Larry O’Connor’s Spin Room Stream on X, Larry O’Connor says: “Now you’re seeing the media split here because we just had another entrance from Governor Ron DeSantis. Governor DeSantis is coming over to talk to the NBC News folks first. And there he is with his wife Casey DeSantis. Can we get over here? All right, so that’s Governor DeSantis entering the stage where the NBC News setup is. We’ll get Governor DeSantis, I think he’s going to come over and talk to the Salem setup as well towards the end of the evening.”
Reporter Naomi Feinstein said, “Gov. Ron DeSantis didn’t field questions from reporters on the spin room floor. He went right to NBC and that was it.”
Salem Media Group, a supposed conservative company, partnered with NBC News on the debate. But a spokesperson for NBC openly told the Washington Post that NBC had full editorial control of the debate questions. Salem host Hugh Hewitt was a relative non-factor as a co-moderator beside NBC’s Lester Holt and Kristen Welker.
To make matters worse, Ron DeSantis then praised NBC News!
DeSantis said that NBC News “did a good job” with the broadcast and he even elaborated, saying, “I think the people at home probably got a good viewing experience, because the questions were substantive, people were able to talk, there wasn’t a lot of screaming back and forth, and so I think the value of this debate was probably more than the one we did in Simi Valley.”
