For the first time this year, Fox News invoked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis more times than former President (and candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination) Donald Trump. Fox personalities and guests had mentioned Trump more often every week since January 1 — until last week when they mentioned DeSantis at least 177 times to Trump’s at least 142, which could signal that the network is shifting its focus to the Florida governor.

For the first 10 weeks of 2023, Fox News has mentioned Trump at least 1,571 times and DeSantis — who has been flirting with a 2024 presidential run in recent weeks — at least 791 times.

DeSantis released his memoir, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Survival, on February 28, and subsequently went on a tour to promote the book. According to BookScan, Courage sold 94,300 copies in its first week, which far outpaced first-week book sales from other potential and actual Republican presidential candidates. And his state of Florida was also in the news frequently last week with a rash of bills designed to expand the state's “Don't Say Gay” law and to curb the rights of women, trans and gender-nonconforming people, and bloggers. Local school districts continued to ban books last week as well.

Guests and personalities on CNN and MSNBC mentioned Trump far more often than those on Fox did: at least 6,482 times on MSNBC and at least 2,683 times on CNN compared to at least 1,571 times on Fox. And although DeSantis mentions have trended upward on CNN and MSNBC, Trump mentions, by contrast, have far outpaced DeSantis every week on those networks.

Fox has also hosted DeSantis more often than Trump. Since the beginning of this year, DeSantis has appeared on the network 10 times. Trump has not appeared on Fox yet this year. His last appearance was an extended interview with Fox host Sean Hannity broadcast over two episodes of Hannity on September 21 and 22, 2022.

Correction (3/16/23): This piece originally stated that Gov. Ron DeSantis had 7 appearances on Fox News between January 1 and March 11, 2023. In fact, he made 10 appearances in that time frame. He has since made an additional 2 appearances.

Media Matters searched transcripts in the Kinetiq video database for all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC for either of the terms “Donald Trump” or “Ron DeSantis” from January 1, 2023, through March 11, 2023. We considered each instance of either term to be a single mention.

We also searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for either of the terms “DeSantis” or “Trump” within close proximity of any of the terms “phone,” “guest,” “interview,” “in studio,” “with me,” “bring in,” “to discuss,” “to talk,” or “calling in” or any variation of any of the terms “speak,” “react,” or “join” from January 1, 2023, through March 11, 2023.

Finally, we searched our internal database of all original, weekday programming on Fox News Channel (shows airing from 6 a.m. through midnight) for segments that analysts determined to include Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) or former president Donald Trump as guests from January 1, 2023, through March 11, 2023.