Ron DeSantis’ favorite “news” site, the pay-to-play Florida Standard is going bye-bye per reports on Twitter. This news was originally reported by Javier Manajerras. This would be a big deal normally but sometimes when a tree falls in a forest, no one hears it. Once feared, Governor DeSantis is now becoming increasingly a figure of comedy and embarrassment even among GOPers.

But let’s rewind as to what made DeSantis pay-to-play manufactured news outlets what they were.

These days many politicians want nothing but flattering coverage or outright propaganda from “news outlets.” And when DeSantis became Governor, outside of the reliably conservative Sunshine State News, which had a distinct Americans for Prosperity tint, there was no permanent conservative blog with a presence in Florida. But DeSantis didn’t want conservatism or the ideological tint of SSN, he wanted personal propaganda, so it appears he set out to create a media ecosystem he controlled completely. An ecosystem made up of new entities with writers who had zero long-term institutional knowledge of the state and its government.

No public official has mastered this type of propaganda the way Governor DeSantis did. Outright hostile to the mainstream media and surrounded by a team of flunkies who constantly impugn the motivations of the work real journalists do, DeSantis commissioned multiple pay-to-play “news outlets” that in fact were nothing but propaganda outlets that attacked Democrats, demonized progressive activists, broke “news” that was handed to them by the Governor’s PR team and eventually became obsessed with attacking Donald Trump and his supporters.

My view is while many on the left complain about DeSantis authoritarianism and regressive social agenda ( all true) my biggest issue with him is that he is the most transactional politician I have ever seen outside of small local yokel city officials.

EVERYTHING he does relates to money and campaign cash. Every policy decision, every public statement. And all of those things were filtered through entities like the Florida Standard.

This ecosystem can survive for ever if money is at play, but DeSantis increasingly desperate situation as evidenced by the mass turnover at his SuperPac, the music to quote our friend Peter Scorsch is ending. So this makes entities like the Standard unsustainable.

I don’t like seeing entities shut down or people out of work. It’s why unlike many on the left or center-left I normally don’t celebrate the collapse of conservative media outlets or campaigns. But in this case I am rejoicing because The Florida Standard and the entire DeSantis media ecosystem represented something new and incredibly dangerous in American society. And for now it appears it’s being beat back.

That is worth celebrating.