A story on the Fox News website Tuesday called out a number of comments former President Trump has made about Republican presidential primary rival Ron DeSantis as “false narratives.”
Noting that “Trump’s attacks failed to make a dent in Florida’s support for DeSantis” the story praised the Florida governor for managing “to stay out of the mudslinging until only recently.”
The story went on to list Trump’s comments on DeSantis’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, stance on social security and other issues.
The article made mention of the fierce Twitter spats between members of Trump’s and DeSantis’s respective war rooms and linked to several of those arguments, which have grown more intense since DeSantis launched his campaign late last month.
The relationships between Fox, the largest conservative media outlet in the country, and the two leading GOP candidates are being closely watched by media and political observers as campaign season ramps up.
Trump has relentlessly attacked Fox for what he says is its efforts to boost DeSantis’s candidacy.
The former president recently agreed, however, to sit for an extensive interview with the network’s leading news anchor Bret Baier later this month, The Hill first reported.
DeSantis, meanwhile, has taken a less traditional approach to rolling out his campaign; he held an online launch event on Twitter via a discussion with tech mogul Elon Musk, and he’s so far declined to take questioning at length from one of the mainstream “corporate media” outlets, as he often pans them.
DeSantis appeared on a Fox prime-time show soon after his announcement event with Musk.