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- Emails from a Tampa Bay Times records request show how Fox News courted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
- DeSantis was invited on the network 113 times from November 2020 through February 2021.
- Fox News says the network "works to secure interviews daily with headliners."
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis raised some eyebrows in May when only Fox News was allowed into his rollout of a controversial election administration bill.
Although the network denied any involvement at the time, it turns out the unusual arrangement was part of a well cultivated symbiosis.
More than 1,200 pages of emails between the governor's office and the US's top conservative network were obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, shedding light on the unique relationship in an investigation published on Friday.
The Tampa Bay Times found that DeSantis was invited on air 113 times from the week of the 2020 election in November through February 2021, which amounts to roughly once a day.
"I honestly think he could host the show with the chops we saw from him at the vaccine site," a Fox News producer wrote in one correspondence with the governor's office after he gave the network an exclusive on a 100-year-old WWII veteran getting vaccinated.
For the vaccination segment, the DeSantis communications team "provided a senior, a location and the talking points" to Fox News, according to the report.
"This is a common practice in television and is not unique to FOX News," a network spokesperson told the Tampa Bay Times in a statement.
Also in a statement, a Fox spokesperson added that the network "works to secure interviews daily with headliners across the political spectrum which is a basic journalism practice at all news organizations."
Insider contacted Fox News for a comment and was referred to their response to the Tampa Bay Times.
While exclusives are not unusual in political coverage - whether a lawmaker offers a first look at a new policy proposal or makes themselves available for a one-on-one interview with an outlet - the DeSantis charm offensive uncovered by the Tampa Bay Times revealed wheel greasing.
"We see him as the future of the party," a Fox producer wrote in one of the emails.
With former President Donald Trump out of the White House, DeSantis has put himself in a good position to live up to that kind of hype. He topped Trump in a straw poll at a conservative conference in June, and enjoyed one of the best receptions from the devoted MAGA audience at CPAC.
And where did Trump discover DeSantis in the first place? On Fox News, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
"Whatever tenuous wall existed between Fox News and DeSantis, it seems to have deteriorated where you have people on both sides sitting in a digital room together pitching programming ideas," A.J. Bauer, a University of Alabama communications professor who studies the network, told the news outlet. "That seems to be new."