“He’s fallen like a very badly injured bird, out of the sky,” said former President Donald Trump of his 2024 GOP presidential nominee challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, this week in a video posted on Truth Social.
It was a post that appeared to continue his battle against FOX News.
When he declared in July that the MAGA wing of the Republican party left FOX, Trump appeared to indicate it was because the networks backed DeSantis to be the GOP’s 2024 presidential candidate. Trump has maintained a strong lead against DeSantis with Republicans at the polls.
Wall Street Journal poll results released Saturday showed that Trump had support from 59% of surveyed voters, holding a 46-point lead over DeSantis. It also showed that the governor was down from previous polls. Both the Wall Street Journal and FOX are owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Yet, after Trump gave FOX a rare compliment Saturday.
“Fox and Friends Saturday is a GREAT SHOW!” he said in a Truth Social post. He acknowledged his rift with the conservative network, and said he hoped “this nice little salutation doesn’t cause them heartache & misery with ‘corporate.’”
Recently, Trump skipped a Republican National Committee debate hosted by FOX. He said in a video this week that the debate had low ratings and called the other candidates “pretenders to the throne.”
CNN reported last week that the debate drew around 12.8 million viewers, compared to 24 million when Trump participated in 2015.
During the debate last month Trump joined Tucker Carlson – who parted ways with FOX earlier this year and started a show on X (formerly Twitter). That interview has racked up hundreds of millions of views on X.
“Wow, my interview with Tucker Carlson has turned out to be the single most watched video and interview in the history of the world, I guess,” said Trump in another video address posted to Truth Social this week. However, Newsweek debunked the claim in a Thursday report and noted that the view number includes people who have merely scrolled past the post.
Despite his praise of “Fox and Friends”, Trump also took a swipe at Fox Corporation Chair Rupert Murdoch this week.
“Fox News and The Wall Street Journal fight me because Murdoch is a globalist,” said Trump in another Truth Social video. “That’s right, Rupert Murdoch is a globalist, you don’t know that. And I am America first. It’s very simple, I put America first. It will always be that way, so get used to it.”
In this video, he also slipped in the new jabs – including the “very badly injured bird” line – at DeSantis, and he said was a Murdoch pick. Trump continued to make posts about DeSantis and other GOP candidates, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie Thursday in Truth Social videos.
“I endorsed him, he went up like a rocket ship, and then he forgot about it,” said Trump of DeSantis.