Maria Bartiromo's interrogation of Gov. Ron DeSantis

Yesterday, Maria Bartiromo interrogated Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday Morning Futures. The first half of the interview, Bartiromo asked policy questions. Gov. DeSantis showed his understanding of the issues and presented his solutions on everything from China, inflation and growing the economy. The first reply he had was to cut spending. His next reply was to open energy production. Third, he talked about the importance of increasing productivity, which he correctly said is the best way to eliminate inflation.

A little over half the way through the interview, though, it turned into an attack. Bartiromo asked "I'm wondering what's going on with your campaign. There was a lot of optimism about you running for president earlier in the year but here's this weekend's headline from the Politico Playbook: Failure to launch. Gov. Ron DeSantis's campaign to topple Donald Trump has stalled. We are way behind says a top DeSantis PAC official. What happened? Despite that badgering, which she's never done with Trump, Gov. DeSantis had a great reply.

GOV. DESANTIS: Maria, these are narratives. The media does not want me to be the nominee. I think that's very clear. Why? Because they know I'll beat Biden but even more importantly, they know that I will actually deliver on all these things. We will stop the invasion at the border. We will take on the drug cartels. We will curtail the administrative state. We will get spending under control. We will do all the things that they don't want to see done and so they are going to continue doing the type of narrative. I can tell you we understand that this is a state-by-state process.

Gov. DeSantis added this, too:

We've had incredible support in the early states, building an organization, signing up the key people that you need to compete in a place like Iowa. We just launched our Mommas movement. My wife was in Iowa with Gov. Kim Reynolds launching that. Parents, and especially moms, are gonna be the secret weapon, both in the primaries and in the general election. Nobody has been a better champion for those folks than me and I would also like to point out, my reelection in Florida, we had the greatest victory of any Republican governor candidate in the state had. And yet, a few months before the election, I had media saying that somehow, my reelection campaign was stalling, that we weren't doing anything, and so we're doing what it takes to win. It's not a national primary. That's not how these things are going.

Despite Ms. Bartiromo's badgering, Gov. DeSantis still looked poised:

After that substantive answer, Ms. Bartiromo returned with a Fox News poll showing Trump ahead by 34 points. She asked Gov. Desantis "What are you gonna do about the fact that the FBI worked with Twitter to censor information and amplify lies and suppress truth? What are you going to do about this influence-peddling that we see is in plain sight that the Biden family has been doing allegedly for more than a decade? What can you do about it to straighten things out, given that Americans are sick-and-tired about the corruption they see in plain sight?

Gov. Desantis replied "We will end the weaponization of government. And that's, of course, a new FBI director on Day One. That's a difference between me and Donald Trump. He says that the jury's still out on FBI Director Christopher Wray. I think you need a new start on Day One. We're going to clean house at the Department of Justice. And you know, I looked back at the Hunter Biden censorship, which is a huge, huge deal to happen in the 2020 election, and yet those were Donald Trump's own agencies that were colluding with Big Tech. I would never allow that to happen. I would fire those people immediately and, in fact, in Florida, we signed legislation that prohibits all state and local government officials in our state from colluding with tech companies from censoring political speech."

Let's remember that a significant portion of the investigation into the Biden money-peddling operation would've happened during Trump's term with Trump's hand-picked U.S. attorney, the same guy that's slow-walking the investigation to the point that some tax evasion charges went past the statute of limitations so they can't be prosecuted. Why didn't Trump's AG either force Weiss to speed up the investigation or fire him? That's Trump's fault. Period. If Trump didn't get so distracted, that investigation might've resulted in Hunter's conviction. That's on Trump, too.

Too often, Trump was too distracted to pay attention to what's important in the various departments. He paid lots of attention to the economy. Unfortunately, he ignored the Hunter Biden investigation. Unfortunately, he didn't pay attention to the Joe Biden money-laundering scheme.

Finally, to Ms. Bartiromo, will she lob softballs at her friend Mr. Trump? Or will she give Mr. Trump the Bret Baier treatment, where she actually acts like a legitimate reporter?