Fox & Friends Hammers DeSantis Debate Prep Leak — Praises Vivek Ramaswamy’s Campaign ‘Catching Lightning in a Bottle’
Are Fox News opinion hosts pivoting from tacitly supporting Ron DeSantis and his bid for the White House to Vivek Ramaswamy? A Friday morning Fox & Friends segment, combined with a 10-minute segment in which they gushed over Ramaswamy earlier in the week, seems to suggest as much.
At issue is a New York Times report from Thursday about a “trove of documents” posted by an individual closely associated with DeSantis’ “Never Back Down” SuperPac that outlines plans for next week’s GOP Debate to air on Fox News. The piece reports:
The trove of documents provides an extraordinary glimpse into the thinking of the DeSantis operation about a debate the candidate’s advisers see as crucial.
“There are four basic must-dos,” one of the memos urges Mr. DeSantis, whom the document refers to as “GRD.”
“1. Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times. 2. State GRD’s positive vision 2-3 times. 3. Hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response. 4. Defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to a Chris Christie attack.”
The documents were posted this week on the website of Axiom Strategies, the company owned by Jeff Roe, the chief strategist of Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down.
If this feels like a curious strategy to you, you share the same sentiment as Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Griff Jenkins, who politely took turns making fun of this approach and letting it be known publicly.
“The golden rule of debate prep is don’t give away what you’re going to say in the debate,” Jenkins offered, to which Doocy agreed.
“You got to figure that they are both preparing a comeback so that after Ron DeSantis does something, say he attacks Chris Christie, as the memo details. Chris Christie is probably going to turn toward Ron DeSantis and say, okay, ‘Governor, is that your thought or is that just your super PAC talking?'” Doocy said.
“Look at the recent polling that Fox put out. So DeSantis dropped six points, but they gained six points, then they did ‘Who would be your second choice?'” Jenkins noted about a recent Fox News poll. “DeSantis was on top, but they went from 0 to 22%. In politics, we call that catching lightning in a bottle. So now you’ve got Vivek getting acknowledgment of his lightning in a bottle, and yet he gets to respond to the memo.”
Watch above via Fox News.
