by As the Iowa caucuses approach, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has increasingly focused on a peculiar target as he seeks to win the Republican nomination: the conservative media ecosystem that supports former President Donald J. Trump.
Desperate to prove that he is a better candidate than Trump (although he is trailing by wide margins in recent polls), DeSantis appears to have turned on many of the media outlets that once promoted his candidacy for being unfair in their coverage. .
“You basically have a Praetorian Guard of conservative media: Fox News, the websites, all of that,” DeSantis told reporters outside his campaign headquarters in Urbandale, Iowa. “They just don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers. And they don’t want the ratings to go down.”
And he added: “That is simply the reality. That’s the truth and I’m not complaining about it. I would prefer that not be the case. But I think that’s just an objective reality.”
It was the most animated version of a message that DeSantis, despite saying he is not complaining, has delivered repeatedly over the past few days. While the former governor’s criticism of Trump is relatively mild, he has urged conservative media outlets to be more critical.
Asking conservative media to hold Trump more accountable allows it to appear that DeSantis is doing it himself, if not directly. But he and his team have also begun attacking Fox News, which was enthusiastic in its coverage of DeSantis until it joined Trump once the former president was first impeached in March 2023.
When DeSantis was a member of the House of Representatives, he became a star among conservatives through appearances on Fox News. He soon built a support network with other conservative media outlets.
The New York Post, which, like Fox News, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, declared him “DeFuture” after his successful 2022 re-election effort, making him a target of some Trump allies who profiled him. as the choice of the conservative media establishment. . He had become accustomed to being defended by conservative media outlets in their culture war fights and by an army of online allies who would defend him on social media.
But that was then. DeSantis’ position in the race for the Republican nomination eroded over many months. Fox News hosted Trump this week in a town hall live from Iowa.
DeSantis, once a constant critic of the mainstream media, has shifted gears, giving interviews to mainstream outlets like CNN and even left-wing networks like MSNBC.
Now he finds himself floating lines of attack against former allies as he fights for second place in caucuses before taking them on the road. To that end, DeSantis used his line about Trump’s Praetorian Guard during an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” before deploying it again on Friday.
But despite all the attacks, DeSantis has continued to spend a good amount of time on Fox News’ airwaves, including in a town hall-style interview earlier this week and two appearances on Friday after taking shots at the network. As for other conservative media outlets, the often Trump-friendly Newsmax aired a Christmas special about DeSantis and his family late last year.
