With three days left until the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis is ratcheting up his attacks on conservative media outlets, primarily Fox News, for not being critical enough of Donald Trump due to the effect that that would have on their bottom line.
While outside one of his campaign offices in Urbandale on Friday, DeSantis likened right-wing media’s treatment of the former president to Roman emperors’ bodyguards and intelligence agents.
“He's got basically a Praetorian Guard of the conservative media: Fox News, the websites, all this stuff,” the Florida governor told reporters. “They just don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers and they don’t want to have their ratings go down. And that’s just the reality. That’s just the truth. And I’m not complaining about it. I’d rather that not be the case. But that’s just I think an objective reality.”
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DeSantis went on to say that there are no “big debates in…the conservative media” about what he has criticized Trump for, like having Dr. Anthony Fauci take a leading role in the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
“That is not happening,” DeSantis said. “People just act like he never said any of this stuff—when he says build a big, beautiful $1 billion-plus new headquarters for the FBI in the center of the swamp. That’s not draining the swamp. That’s deepening the swamp. Are they having big debates on these conservative-leaning media about how that is not what he has campaigned on in the past? No, they’re not.”
DeSantis was referring to how, in the summer of 2020, Trump asked for $1.75 billion for a new FBI building in Washington, D.C. While that amount was included in a COVID relief bill at the time, it ultimately did not come to fruition.
“So that’s kind of the reason why I think [Trump] is able to do what he’s doing, because the sources that Republicans are now looking to, more than any, are just not even engaging in any of this,” DeSantis continued.
When asked why he believes this to be the case, DeSantis suggested that it’s about respecting their audience—a mantra that Fox News executives have hammered into their subordinates.
“I think that a lot of it is rooted in audience, and thinking that you can’t have, you know, that type. You’ll lose audience,” he said.
Friday wasn’t the first time DeSantis has taken shots at Fox, whose longest-running primetime anchor, Sean Hannity, was considered a “shadow chief of staff” during the Trump administration and often holds friendly one-on-one interviews with Trump.
Last week, DeSantis went after “all these conservative radio guys and Fox News people” who “will never criticize because they’re so concerned that someone may yell at them.” He also stated directly that “Fox News has bailed [Trump] out” by broadcasting town halls of his that coincide with GOP primary debates, as was the case on Wednesday night. While DeSantis and Nikki Haley went at it, Trump was acting according to his desire to avoid “harassment.” This decision, DeSantis predicted Friday, will “hurt him on the margins.”
If Trump had participated in any of the debates where DeSantis attacked his record, then press coverage would be more fair, he added.
“It’s different for me to just be doing that to a camera versus him being right there,” he said. “When you have a clash, then you guys have to cover it, and it becomes something that people start to talk about.”
