(DCWatchdog.com) – Former President Donald Trump attacked Fox News because the conservative network covered a speech by Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis before a police union in Staten Island, New York.
Trump was angry because Fox News covered DeSantis’s event instead of an address he made before a fan club at the Palm Beach Airport Hilton Monday evening in Florida’s Palm Beach county.
The event was Trump’s first public speech since he announced his 2024 presidential campaign last month.
“So interesting to watch Fox News cover the small and unenthusiastic 139-person crowd in Staten Island for DeSantis, but stay as far away as possible from coverage of the thousands of people, many unable to get in, at the Club 47 event in West Palm Beach, Florida,” the former president wrote on Truth Social.
For the first time, Trump called Fox News “RINOs” – “Republican In Name Only.”
“I call Fox News the RINO Network, and their DOWN BIG Ratings accurately reflect the name. If FAKE NEWS CNN was smart, which they’re not, they’d go Conservative & ‘All Trump, All the Time,’ like in 2016, and become a Ratings Juggernaut,” Trump added.
On Monday evening, DeSantis gave a nine-minute live interview on “Fox & Friends” during which he criticized President Joe Biden’s lack of strategy in the war in Ukraine, and refuted criticism that he wasn’t radical enough by former ambassador Nikki Haley, the other official candidacy for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
During his Club 47 speech, Trump once again called DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious,” which led to a massive round of applause from the audience, The Daily Caller reported.
“Ron did good in Florida, but I did great,” the former president said regarding the governor’s landslide reelection in November.
DeSantis is widely expected to announce he is running for president in the upcoming months, even though he hasn’t commented on the subject.
In another Truth Social post earlier this week, Trump attacked The New York Post, another conservative media outlet, because it published a profile story about DeSantis’ blue-collar upbringing and his studies at Yale University. He said the article was a “fake news puff piece.”
“In writer Salena Zito’s Fake News ‘puff piece’ about DeSantis, which supposedly appeared in the dying New York Post, which is way down in readership just like FoxNews is way down in Ratings, why doesn’t she mention that he wants to cut Social Security & Medicare, loves losers like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and Karl Rove, and it getting CLOBBERED in the polls by me,” Trump wondered.
“DeSantis is a RINO who is trying to hide his past. I don’t read the New York Post anymore. It has become Fake News, just like Fox & WSJ!” Trump added.
The former president has ramped up his attacks on DeSantis since February 9th, when a new public opinion poll showed the Florida Governor had a lead of nine percentage points on him in a hypothetical GOP primary election.
DeSantis’ response has been that he was “delivering results” for Florida instead of smearing other Republicans.
