DeSantis takes comfort in Fox News
Governor’s handling of pandemic, vaccinations portrayed in two differing perspectives
The two perspectives of Gov. Ron DeSantis couldn’t have been more different.
On one cable channel, Gov. Ron DeSantis was depicted Friday as a champion COVID-19 fighter, getting Florida’s vulnerable seniors vaccinated.
The night before, on another cable channel — in what seemed like a different universe — he was depicted as incompetent in his handling of the pandemic and bungling vaccinations of the state’s older residents.
The glowing reviews of DeSantis’ performance went to viewers of Fox News Channel, the favorite of Republicans, especially the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. Over on the most left-leaning cable channel, MSNBC, DeSantis had it all wrong on Thursday evening.
Embraced by Fox
Optically, Team DeSantis notched a political win Friday morning on Fox & Friends, the morning show that’s a platform for conservative commentary and spin. For most of the last four years, it was a favorite of former President Donald Trump, who frequently called in to espouse his views.
DeSantis appeared from St. Petersburg, where he in effect hosted a portion of the program in which Henry Sayler, a 100-yearold World War II veteran, received a COVID-19 vaccination. The program’s three hosts beamed their approval.
It was such a perfect madefor-TV moment that Aaron Rupar,
a liberal journalist at the website Vox acknowledged it in a post on Twitter: “You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to Ron DeSantis, but this is pretty cool.”
Here’s how part of it went: Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy to DeSantis: “Just ask him how that felt?”
DeSantis: “Hey Henry, how did that feel?
Sayler: “I didn’t feel a thing.”
Sayler, who is a former Republican state senator, told the cable audience “how happy we are to live on the No. 1 state in the union and have the No. 1 governor in the union.”
The segment was long, by TV standards, almost eight minutes. DeSantis was evidently pleased; it was posted later on his YouTube channel.
DeSantis also took advantage of the platform to express outrage over reports that some National Guard troops called to ensure security in Washington, D.C., for the presidential inaugural (in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters) were told they had to sleep on the floor of a parking garage.
Democrats and Republicans were also outraged, and the issue apparently was resolved Thursday night. DeSantis added his concern, explaining that “They’re soldiers. They’re not Nancy Pelosi’s servants.” There is no evidence that Pelosi, the House speaker, was in any way responsible for directing where the Guard members were told to sleep.
On COVID-19, DeSantis depicted himself as a champion of the state’s older residents. “We’re putting our Florida seniors first.
He then got a boost from Fox & Friends co-host Pete Hegseth: “Governor, you mentioned the amount of people vaccinated in state of Florida and it is leading the nation and in fact the percentage of the vaccine administered to seniors in Florida nearly 65% — 500,000 individuals in the state at least have received the vaccine. What are you doing differently that’s allowing you to vaccinate so many more of the vulnerable population?”
In a Thursday evening segment on The ReidOut, the chyron, which is the type running along the bottom of the screen, proclaimed Breaking News. “Florida governor pushes back on Biden Covid Response Plan.”
Host Joy Reid portrayed DeSantis as a coronavirus failure standing in the way of President Joe Biden’s efforts to bring the pandemic under control.
“You know I lived in Florida for 14 years, and unfortunately Florida has been cursed with repeated incompetent governors. They get re-elected and I cannot tell you why, but this is probably the worst governor that I’ve ever seen when I was there. There was nothing like him before. This man has presided over 1.6 million cases and 25,000 deaths in Florida, and deaths have been on the rise just since January,” Reid said.
Reid continued, eventually posing a question to her guest: “Given the fact that you have a governor like that who’s already failed in his vaccine rollout, there are senior citizens sleeping on sidewalks for hours just trying to get the vaccine, going from county to county to county trying to find a way to get it, and they’re supposed to be authorized to get it, how do you roll out a national plan when you have to go through governors like him? Is there a way that the [Biden] administration can get around people like Ron DeSantis?”
TV images
The cable networks are playing to divided audiences. “Increasingly we are consuming news that comports to our political viewpoints, which is reinforcing and it increases division,” said Kevin Wagner, a Florida Atlantic University political scientist.
“It used to be that the general strategy for elections for most politicians was to try to appeal to the broadest audience possible, with the idea that the vast majority of people are somewhere in the middle-ish area,” Wagner said. Now, political campaigns seek to turn out like-minded voters. “It’s proven to be effective at winning elections, if not as helpful at governing.”
DeSantis is a master at appealing to the conservative cable audience. As a junior member of Congress before running for governor, DeSantis made himself known among Republicans through appearances on Fox in which he unwaveringly supported Trump, who liked what he saw.
DeSantis announced his candidacy for governor during an appearance on Fox & Friends. Trump’s endorsement for the 2018 Republican nomination for governor propelled him to victory over Adam Putnam, who’d long been seen the favorite, after a campaign in which DeSantis made himself available at all hours of the day and night for appearances on Fox.
And Fox viewers could decide his political future.
DeSantis, who has presidential ambitions, is up for re-election in 2022. The results could depend on how Floridians assess his performance on the pandemic.
As DeSanis mirrored Trump’s pandemic approach last year, he saw his favorability ratings plunge. In February 2020, 54% of those surveyed by the Florida Atlantic University Business and Economics Polling Initiative approved of the governor’s performance, with 20% disapproval — a net positive of 34 percentage points. In October, the FAU poll found 42% of Florida voters approved and 46% disapproved of DeSantis’ performance, a net negative of 4 points.
“The governor did very well when he took office” in identifying issues such as education and the environment that had broad appeal,
Wagner said. “The problem, of course, is that the way of addressing the COVID pandemic has become highly partisan, and there’s not a lot of room there for what people perceive as moderate approach.”
As coronavirus cases and deaths moved upward, DeSantis prioritized and continues to support maintaining the state’s economy over restrictions that epidemiologists say could help slow the spread of COVID-19.
In December he opened coronavirus vaccines to people 65 and over — a key voting bloc — weeks before it became the official recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Friday, DeSantis used Fox & Friends to show Sayler getting vaccinated, declaring, “We really believe today is the day that we’re going to do our 1 millionth senior in the state of Florida.”
About 90 minutes later, his office issued a news release with a more nuanced assertion, that the state is “approaching 1 million seniors vaccinated.”