DeSantis Spokesperson Reportedly Deletes Tweets Blasting ‘Fake News’ OAN After Big Donation From Network Chief
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The deputy spokesperson for Ron DeSantis reportedly deleted tweets blasting the far-right One America News Network following a donation from the outlet’s owner to a political action committee backing the Florida governor.
On Monday, the Daily Beast’s Confider newsletter reported on tweets from last year by Jeremy Redfern blasting the Trump-boosting network.
“OAN. (Something that starts with an O) qAnon Network? Help me out here,” he tweeted in 2020.
“OAN. The most trusted leader in Fake News,” tweeted Redfern on Jan. 6, 2021, the day the U.S. Capitol was stormed by Trump supporters. This was in response to, according to the Daily Beast, “an [OAN] graphic claiming Trump won in a landslide.”
“This is an OAN reporter. She is delusional,” he tweeted a couple weeks later, blasting Christina Bobb, who was at the time an anchor for the network and is currently a lawyer for former President Donald Trump. This was in response to her tweeting that “[Joe] Biden will never be president.”
“I’ve never watched OANN in my life,” he tweeted the following October.
When contacted by The Daily Beast, Redfern blasted not OAN but The Daily Beast.
“You’re right. I was wrong – the Daily Beast is actually the head of the Fake News Brigade,” he said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
Redfern deleted the aforementioned tweets. He did not respond to The Daily Beast as to why he did so.
The report on Redfern’s now-deleted tweets comes a week after The Daily Beast reported on OAN owner Robert Herring donating $20,000 to Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC this month.
“The donation is especially notable considering OAN and Herring’s unyielding loyalty to [Donald] Trump and the many ways in which the former president has quietly stewed over the emergence of DeSantis as a wannabe heir to the MAGA throne,” noted The Daily Beast.
Herring defended the donation.
“It means that we support De Santis as a vice President,” he told the Beast. “I believe that President Trump was the greatest President in My eighty years.”
OAN has struggled to maintain its presence on cable. The fringe network has mostly been relegated to streaming services – including Pluto TV, Roku, and Amazon’s Fire TV – as its last cable provider, Verizon, stopped carrying OAN last month. DirectTV stopped carrying OAN in April.
