Not long ago, Fox anchors were pretty hot on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and pretty not on Donald Trump—so much so that Trump kept grousing about their incessant coverage of DeSantis.
"FoxNews is promoting Ron DeSanctus so hard and so much that there’s not much time left for Real News," Trump complained in late February on his platform Truth Social.
But a month later, things have gotten much more sunny for Trump and gloomy for DeSantis both in terms of polling and Fox coverage.
A new Fox poll released Wednesday that tested 16 Republican candidates found twice as much support for Trump over DeSantis among GOP voters, 54% - 24%. Trump has also doubled his lead in the poll since last month, when he was 15 points ahead of his chief rival.
Morning Consult found very similar numbers this week regarding the Trump-DeSantis rivalry and the GOP field more generally, with Trump besting DeSantis 52% - 26% and Mike Pence finishing third at 7% (he was 6% in the Fox poll). Everyone else is secondary, with Nikki Haley and Liz Cheney duking it out for fourth place at about a handful of points or less. It's worth noting that, among that group, only Trump and Haley have officially announced their 2024 bids.
It's also worth checking in with Civiqs tracking trends on the frontrunners, where Republican voters still hold a more favorable view of DeSantis than Trump, 84% - 75%. But DeSantis has been slowly deflating over the last handful of months since his post-reelection high of 90% favorability among Republicans.
Trump, meanwhile, has gained a couple of points over the past two months.
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Just a reminder that there's a lifetime between now and February 5, 2024, when the GOP voting starts in Iowa. Also, national polls shed very little light on who will prevail in the Hawkeye State and how that will propel the race going forward.
But this week, Fox dipped its little toe back in the Trump swamp with a friendly Sean Hannity interview, in which Trump suggested DeSantis would be “working in a pizza parlor” right now if Trump hadn’t plucked him out of obscurity in 2018. Trump also added this cheery nugget: “I think our country is dead.”
Anyone not previously enchanted by Trump’s gloomy disposition surely wants to vote for him now. Trump’s appearance was so bad, in fact, that other Fox guests skewered him for “complaining endlessly about the past” and “constantly dwelling on grievance.” Yikes.
But never mind that. Trump’s interview was just another play on Republicans’ infamous 50-minus strategy of the last few cycles—figure out what voters absolutely do not like and do more of it.