MSNBC’s Jen Psaki Wonders If Ron DeSantis Really Wants To Be President: ‘Governor, Are You Okay?’

The misfiring campaign of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis continues to generate all the wrong kinds of media stories, from firing 40% of his campaign staff to releasing a campaign video featuring a symbol associated with Nazis. The campaign’s repeated stumbles led MSNBC’s Jen Psaki to wonder, “are you okay, Governor? I mean, for real? Are you good? It’s okay if you don’t actually want to run for president. It’s completely okay.”

On MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes Friday, Psaki—who was filling in as host—dissected the DeSantis campaign, which dropped into third place in a recent Ohio poll, which gave DeSantis 9%—55 points behind Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and 3 points behind Vivek Ramaswamy.

DeSantis has seen his overall favorability drop, from +1 in FiveThirtyEight’s polling “net favorability” average to -9.8 today, with his unfavorable rating rising from 36% in January to 45.5% today—meaning he’s essentially underwater.

Psaki said it’s DeSantis’ “increasingly bizarre campaign for the White House” that seems to be turning off voters. “It’s difficult, really, to take away any other conclusion,” she said.

“It’s hard to imagine that Desantis’s defense of some policies had the goal of actually winning votes in mind,” Psaki said. “This week, he defended a decision by the Florida Department of Education to include language in the state curriculum, effectively defending slavery and touting the supposed benefits of it to people who were enslaved. I mean, it was so beyond the pale. Even the standards of conservative culture wars didn’t buy it, didn’t buy into it. It sparked one of the first attacks this primary cycle from the friendly and mild mannered Republican candidate, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who criticized the governor’s comments by pointing out there is no silver lining in slavery.”