Apparently Ron DeSantis has met the Javert to his Valjean, the Deputy Sam Gerard to his Richard Kimble, the Brock Samson to his Monarch ... and it’s a 15-year-old kid who has to have a parent drive him to campaign stops.
Meet Quinn Mitchell, a New Hampshire resident who is passionate about politics. And since he lives in the First in the Nation state, he has ample opportunities to ask presidential candidates questions, since the vagaries of our system demand that anyone aspiring to the presidency has to spend months dragging themselves through the miserable New England cold to be inspected like a side of beef in every overheated middle-school cafeteria and retirement community between Portsmouth and Canada.
Ah, the majesty of American democracy.
Mitchell went viral earlier this summer when he asked DeSantis during a campaign stop in Hollis if the Florida governor believed Donald Trump “violated the peaceful transfer of power, a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold” on January 6. It’s a pretty smart and direct question. So naturally DeSantis dodged it as if it was Black history, secure in his knowledge that answering truthfully any Trump-related question is no way to earn the GOP presidential nomination.
The kicker is that Mitchell says he felt bad about the negative reaction DeSantis received. Imagine that: You ask a question of a candidate, the candidate steps all over his own dick while not answering it, resulting in a viral video that maybe hurts his campaign a tiny amount … and you care enough about the integrity of the process to want to apologize to him for causing him trouble.
Except you can’t apologize, because the candidate’s security detail has marked you as a skinnier Leon Czolgosz and won’t let you anywhere near him.
From The Daily Beast:
That’s when things went south: right after the handshake, Mitchell recalled his shock when he felt a firm tug on his shirt, pulling him away from DeSantis. Suddenly, all he could see were the outstretched arms of security guards and plain clothed aides. […]
If that were not startling enough, right after the fracas, a DeSantis security guard cornered Mitchell and ordered him not to move from the spot for another five minutes. In response, he did what almost any 15-year old would do.
He texted his mom.
A lot of teenagers would have recorded the encounter and put it on TikTok with some snarky commentary and weird music. DeSantis is actually lucky with this kid.
Instead of diffusing the situation, however, the Florida First Lady suggested to Mitchell’s mother that she was overreacting—and that her son was fibbing.
“Well, I’m a mother, too,” Casey said, according to Mitchell and other witnesses, along with multiple sources who shared contemporaneous communications on the incident with The Daily Beast. “I know what you’re experiencing, and we’re all very afraid for our children—even if they’re exaggerating.”
LOL, the wannabe First Lady and bargain bin Jackie Kennedy, Casey DeSantis, sure knows how to help her husband endear himself to voters. It’s hard to believe this campaign has been cratering.
It wasn’t just that he saw a pair of security guards flanking him as he made his way to the far side of the venue. The weird part was that Never Back Down staffers were taking photos of him. It was notable to Mitchell, even before he learned of the ominous caption—“got our kid”—that one staffer was seen attaching to a Snapchat photo.
Any Democratic campaign that got caught surreptitiously photographing a minor would be fending off months of pedophilia accusations from right-wing media. “Groomers!” Laura Ingraham would howl, nightly, like some sort of possessed Chatty Cathy.
For his part, Mitchell says he won’t give up asking questions of all the candidates, and would even press DeSantis again if he sees him at an event.
He also says he probably won’t give up his ambitions of being a political reporter. Well, he’s young, he doesn’t have to pick a major for awhile yet.
The real story here is how a 15-year old child managed to do more journalism in 5 minutes than the entire US political media landscape did in 5 years.
He already has more skills and courage than Maggie Habberman and the gin drinking hack at NYT.