Trump’s ‘Praetorian Guard!’ DeSantis Ratchets Up Attacks On Fox News For Protecting Trump Out of Fear of ‘Losing Viewers’

Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ripped Fox News over what he characterized as its soft coverage of former President Donald Trump on Friday, arguing that the network and other conservative media served as Trump’s “praetorian guard.”

On the campaign trail, DeSantis told a group of reporters that Iowans had “an opportunity to really make this a race where he’s going to have to engage.”

“You can’t have a nominee that doesn’t even participate in the process and then gets into the fall and then the whole machine comes after. So I think that him getting on the debate stage at some point I think is something that’s going to need to happen just for the Republican Party to be in, to be in good stead,” he argued.

After being asked if his criticism of Trump for skipping out on the debate was resonating with voters, DeSantis trained his fire on Fox in a lengthy answer during which he accused the network of being “worried about losing viewers”:

Well, here’s the thing. You know, and this is not a complaint, This is just an observation. Like, I take, like when I look at like how you run a campaign or this, I just look at the world as it is, you know, there’s going to be certain media against you, obviously certain that he’s got basically a praetorian guard of the conservative media, Fox News, you know, the websites, all the stuff, they just don’t they don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers and they don’t want to have the ratings go down. And that’s just the reality, that’s just the truth.

And I’m not complaining about it. I’d rather that not be the case, but that’s just, I think, an objective reality. So when you’re saying that, who is amplifying the criticism, right?

I mean, if there is, you could be running ‘Hey, he said this about Fauci’ and that could be running and they could be having big debates in kind of the conservative media. That is not happening. People just act like he never said any of this stuff. When he says ‘Build a big, beautiful $1 billion+ new headquarters for the FBI in the center of the swamp,’ that’s not draining the swamp, that’s deepening the swamp.

Are they having big debates on these conservative leaning media about how that is not what he has campaigned on in the past? No, they’re not. So that’s just, that is kind of the reason why I think he’s able to do what he’s doing, because the sources that Republicans are now looking to more than any are just not even engaging in any of this.

You know, you have to ask them. I mean, I think that a lot of it is, is rooted in, in audience and thinking that you can’t have, you know, that’s how you lose audience. I don’t know, but the reality is that’s just, that’s just the case.

So people will say to me, I had people come up to me in the press with the debate saying, you know, ‘Oh, you didn’t go after Trump in the debate.’ That is not true! Like if you watch the debate, I hit him on BLM. I hit him on not building the wall, the debt, not draining the swamp, Fauci, all those things. But it’s different for me to just be doing that to a camera versus him being right there. That’s how you — when you have a clash, then you guys have to cover it and it becomes something that people start to talk about.

It’s different to just lob it directly into the camera. It doesn’t get the same amount of legs. And so, you know, that’s just the reality of what we’re dealing with here.

On Wednesday night, Fox hosted a townhall event with Trump opposite the CNN debate between DeSantis and Nikki Haley that the frontrunner decided to skip out on.

DeSantis himself has appeared on Fox frequently, appearing at Fox townhall on Tuesday and Sean Hannity’s show on Thursday. DeSantis also had two interviews with Martha MacCallum and Laura Ingraham which took place on Friday after the gaggle as well as an hour long town hall on Tuesday night. He’s also booked on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream this weekend.

He also debated California Governor Gavin Newsom on the network in November that his campaign touted as a success.

For his part, Trump has repeatedly criticized Fox for being too kind to DeSantis.

“Fox has him all over the place, even on Hannity last night,” complained Trump in December.

DeSantis also criticized Fox’s townhall with Trump on Morning Joe Thursday, declaring that he didn’t “think that there were very many critical questions” at the event.

Watch above via Newsmax.