"Candy Land?" Jason Garcia and I hash out Chris Christie's sneer at Florida journalism

A few weeks back, the newly anti-MAGA Chris Christie laid out a hypothesis for Ron DeSantis’ collapse as a national candidate and figure.

“No discernible critical media.”

“Candy Land down there if you’re a Republican.”

Those are wounding words for Florida’s reporters and journalism institutions. But are they true?

Within days of each other, Florida reporter Jason Garcia and I both used/addressed Christie’s “Candy Land” critique in articles we published on our respective Substack sites. See below:

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So I thought it might be fun to invite Jason onto the PE1 podcast to talk more about it. He graciously accepted — and proved me right. I doubt you will find a better discussion of the intersection of journalism, government, money, and power than this podcast edition brings you. I’m very proud of it. There’s also a lot of name-dropping and some DoE/Jefferson scandal talk. So good times all around.

For those of you who don’t know, Jason Garcia is the owner and operator of the substack site “Seeking Rents,” to which you should all immediately subscribe if you don’t already. Prior to setting out on his own, Garcia was a star investigative reporter for the Orlando Sentinel. He contributed heavily to the reporting on the “ghost candidate” stories that led to multiple prosecutions.

“Seeking Rents” examines how power and wealth use government to create “rents” they can collect from society. Jason particularly specializes in tax policy analysis. Everything he publishes comes anchored in journalistic depth and systemic understanding. And I’m thrilled he stopped by for a while last week. Give this a listen. You won’t be disappointed.