Ron DeSantis was supposed to rid the GOP, once and for all, of Donald Trump. How? By pitching himself as his younger, more disciplined copycat. Trump kicked off his campaign slagging off Mexicans; DeSantis launched a full-on assault on the LGBTQIA+ community. Trump did a half-assed bit about trans people, clearly only because someone told him to; DeSantis dropped a full-on homophobic/homoerotic ad, chastising him for not being bigoted enough. Did it work? Nope. He’s a distant second to the big guy. And the most powerful Republicans are starting to get cold feet.
As per Rolling Stone, Rupert Murdoch, the network’s all-powerful figurehead, has reportedly become the most vocally skeptic person at Fox News about DeSantis’ chances of a “comeback.” Meatball Ron is doing so poorly that they’re even considering pinching their noses and going back to Trump.
“[Rupert’s] understandable worry is that we may end up being stuck with Trump anyway,” one source told RS. After all, DeSantis is “underperforming. Anybody can see that.” They added that the Murdochs are “seeing it, too.”
Another source was far more blunt, saying, “They are transactional and can smell a loser a mile away.”
Rolling Stone speaks of a “marked shift for the Murdoch clan” in the last few weeks about how to cover DeSantis. Perhaps that’s why Maria Bartiromo over the weekend straight up asked the Florida governor, who used to rely on the network for softball questions, why he was doing so poorly. (That he pretended as though nothing was wrong is probably not a good sign — for him, at least.)
It’s also probably why the Murdoch-owned The New York Post, which was once all in on DeSantis, has been, in Rolling Stone’s words, “begun to look askance” at him.
If DeSantis’ decline continues, he’ll have painted himself as an old school bigot and fucked up his state’s economy for nothing. The way he acts, he’ll probably claim it was worth it.
(Via Rolling Stone)