The Tampa Bay Times obtained via a records request 1,250 pages of emails between Fox News and DeSantis’ office, spanning a four-month period beginning near the end of 2020. The paper’s analysis found: “From the week of the 2020 election through February, the network asked DeSantis to appear on its airwaves 113 times, or nearly once a day.” The paper also found that in the first six months of 2021, DeSantis had appeared on Fox eight times with Hannity, seven times with Laura Ingraham, and six times with Tucker Carlson.
In one example, a Fox producer told DeSantis’ office that anchor Martha MacCallum had set out to “look forward and really spotlight the STARS of the GOP,” and that “she named Gov. DeSantis as one.”
Another producer bluntly said in an email: “We see him as the future of the party.” Indeed, more than being just the “future” of the Republican Party, Fox itself played a key role in DeSantis’ past ascent to the GOP nomination for governor back in 2018, when the then-congressman’s frequent appearances on the network helped bring him to the attention of the network’s most important viewer at the time, then-President Donald Trump.
The article opens with an incident from January when, “during a period marked by confusion and images of seniors in long lines desperate for a shot, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office devised a pitch to air a more flattering view. “ Fox & Friends was given exclusive coverage of an event featuring DeSantis with senior citizens receiving COVID-19 vaccinations — and as the article notes, “No other media would be allowed in.”
“I honestly think he could host the show with the chops we saw from him at the vaccine site,” said a Fox producer, in an email to DeSantis’ deputy director for communications.
It is worth adding that a similar event occurred later in May, beyond the scope of the newspaper’s analysis, when DeSantis gave Fox & Friends exclusive coverage for his signing of a new voter suppression law. DeSantis signed the bill live on cable television while barring media outlets in Florida from being able to cover the event, a move that violated decades of First Amendment jurisprudence and the principles of free speech.
But perhaps the single most egregious example happened earlier this year, when DeSantis was set to appear on the January 28 edition of Fox News Primetime with rotating host and Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo. Hours before the show, DeSantis’ office sent Fox a graph that compared the hospitalization rate in Florida to the “locked down states” of New York and California.