Anderson Cooper Breaks His Brain Trying to Understand DeSantis Excuse For Bad Poll Numbers

CNN’s Anderson Cooper struggled to wrap his mind around Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ explanation for why he is polling poorly against Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.

DeSantis has been polling second behind Trump for weeks, with some surveys showing him trailing by as many as 30 points or more. Unsurprisingly, the governor has been asked about the numbers in media appearances.

On Monday’s AC360, Cooper aired two recent Fox hits of DeSantis where the governor said the media is to blame.

“The media does not want me to be the nominee,” he said in one. “I think that’s very, very clear. Why? Because they know I’ll beat Biden. But even more importantly, they know I will actually deliver on all these things. It’s pretty clear that the media does not want me to be the candidate.”

In another appearance, he said, “It’s pretty clear that the media does not want me to be the candidate.”

“It’s the media’s fault,” Cooper reacted. “To be clear, the governor almost exclusively appears on friendly conservative outlets. And even there, as you can see, he doesn’t seem happy with the questions.”

The host went on to say, “As for his claim it’s the media who don’t want him to defeat Donald Trump, poll shows that it’s actually a plurality of Republican voters who don’t.”

However, Cooper low-balled the number, since polls actually show a clear majority of Republican voters prefer someone other than DeSantis. The most recent CNN poll shows DeSantis at 26% – 21 points behind Trump.

Cooper then welcomed former Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Van Jones to the show while continuing to process the governor’s reasoning.

“Congressman, can you just try to explain how exactly the media – much of which he does not speak to – is to blame for Governor Desantis’ struggling candidacy among Republican voters?”

Kinzinger replied that DeSantis is taking his cues from Trump.

“[N]ever ever accept blame for anything,” he said. “And the media’s an easy target. Again, yeah, he only appears on Fox News or friendly media. He doesn’t come on CNN, but somehow it’s the media’s fault.”

Later in the segment, Cooper turned to Jones.

“Van, just logically, I mean I guess he’s referring to what he would call the left-wing media, anybody who he’s not actually speaking to, the host said. “But, so he’s saying that the left-wing media is influencing Republican voters not to vote for him.”

“Look, it’s kind of sad,” Jones replied. “To the contrary, the media, the establishment media was jumping up and down, I mean, way before he even launched. Breathless, ‘Oh, maybe it won’t be Trump. Maybe it’ll be DeSantis.’ And I thought that was kind of weird since I thought DeSantis was probably worse than Trump. But I mean, he got the biggest build-up, the biggest support. It was nuts. It was DeSantismania for months and months.”

Watch above via CNN.