DeSantis aide rips reporter over hot mic remark

An advisor to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has ripped into a local reporter who was caught on a hot mic saying her job was to make the Republican feel “uncomfortable.”

Christina Pushaw, the rapid response director for the GOP favorite, called out First Coast News reporter Atyia Collins on Twitter following the caught-on-camera gaffe during a DeSantis press conference on Tuesday.

During a livestream of the event in Jacksonville, the reporter was overheard telling someone that her role was to “ask the tough questions and make him uncomfortable, I guess.”

Pushaw quickly called out the “journactivist”, tweeting: “Next time make sure you aren’t speaking into a hot mic while you wait to ‘make him uncomfortable’.”

In a follow-up tweet on Wednesday, the DeSantis aide said: “A journalist’s job is to tell the truth. Of course, speaking truth to power can make the powerful uncomfortable, but ‘discomfort’ shouldn’t be the goal — the goal should be revealing the truth.

“Pushing biased narratives with the express goal to create discomfort isn’t journalism,” she added.

Elsewhere during the livestream, Collins was heard saying that her boss had instructed her to “just run up to him” and “yell questions” at DeSantis during the event.

The Republican governor took questions from the media during Tuesday’s event, including one from Collins, who tried to press DeSantis on a viral video that showed empty shelves in a Duval County school in the wake of his administration’s so-called “book ban.”

DeSantis, however, interrupted her midway through her question to say the video she was alluding to was a “fake narrative.” 

“That was not true,” the governor said.

“This is trying to create some narrative as if that they hadn’t even put the books out yet to begin with. So there’s no need for all of that stuff. What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to act like somehow, you know, we don’t want books.” 

Last year, DeSantis formally banned public schools from using books that includes material like critical race theory and so-called “social and emotional learning.”