Botched '60 Minutes' DeSantis story latest mainstream media hit piece on potential 2024 GOP contender

Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz joins'America Reports' to discuss the widely criticized CBS '60 Minutes' segment. A widely criticized "60 Minutes" report focusing on Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is the latest example of a mainstream media attack on the potential 2024 White House hopeful. Despite the Sunshine State's robust economy and a strong response to the coronavirus pandemic (Florida currently has the the 27th-most coronavirus deaths per capita despite being the third-most populous state in the Union), DeSantis has come under fire in the press for everything from partnering with the Publix grocery store chain on vaccinations, to getting shots to Holocaust survivors, to accusations of cooking the books, to keeping the state largely open during the pandemic, to running afoul of a Florida data scientist who was later arrested for hacking a state computer system. "This is partisan corporate media and I think at this point these people ... they're basically ambulance chasers with a microphone," DeSantis said on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday. We know they're lying, they know that we know that they're lying, and yet they lie and they lie and they lie." DeSantis, a strong ally of former President Donald Trump, is a potential contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. In the "60 Minutes" segment, which aired Sunday, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi alleged DeSantis gave Publix lucrative rights to vaccine distribution in response to a $100,000 donation to his PAC. However, Publix and DeSantis vigorously disputed the piece's recycled narrative, and critics noted Publix was a natural fit for vaccine partnership given its more than 800 locations in the state. "That's a fake narrative," DeSantis told CBS News. "I met with the county mayor, I met with the administrator, I met with all the folks at Palm Beach County and I said, 'Here's some of the options: We can do more drive-thru sites, we can give more to hospitals, we can do the Publix.'