Ron DeSantis blames media for Lebanese protests outside American embassy

Anti-American protests are ongoing outside the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon. And Ron DeSantis says media narratives are to blame.

During a Fox News Radio interview, the 2024 presidential candidate told host Brian Kilmeade that those protests were because of press outlets “jumping the gun” and incorrectly claiming that Israeli munitions blew up a Gaza hospital, taking 500 lives.

DeSantis claimed media organizations were “pursuing a narrative about this hospital, basically taking the word of Hamas for it, that this was somehow an (Israeli Defense Forces) strike on a hospital when in fact, it was a rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic jihad that misfired and hit the hospital.”

He said “the media ran with that, that stoked a lot of rage throughout the region and it was false.”

DeSantis believes that Israeli forces “are going to be fighting in an environment where so much of the media is going to be arrayed against them,” including “so much of the Intelligentsia, internationally, United Nations, all these different things.”

“It’s just important that America stand with them, have moral clarity and say they were the victims of this attack. They have a right to protect their people and they have a right to see this through,” the Governor added.

While an investigation of the explosion’s origin is still ongoing, it appears President Joe Biden shares DeSantis’ belief that Israel was not responsible for the detonation of the medical facility.

As reported by Haaretz, Biden told Israeli media Wednesday that the attack “appears that it was done by the other team, not you.”

Biden is “sad and outraged by the explosion in the hospital in Gaza,” but he stopped short of conflating Hamas with all Palestinians, saying “we have to also bear in mind that Hamas does not represent all Palestinian people, and has brought them only suffering.”