PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — Donald Trump’s former arch nemesis has become his trusted ally in his negative campaign against his expected top GOP rival in 2024: Governor Ron DeSantis.
Trump’s war against the mainstream media has been consistent and conspicuous since 2015. Lately, however, he cites them as a credible source of reporting when their stories paint DeSantis in a negative light.
“THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND”
The Trump campaign sent an email to supporters on Saturday that cited over a dozen recent news articles criticizing the governor – most of which came from Left-leaning media outlets.
The email header reads: “Ron DeSantis Spent Last Week Traveling The World, And All He Got Were These Terrible Headlines.”
Stories featured in the email came from publications that Trump has decried as “fake news” in the past, including Politico, NBC News, Newsweek, New York Magazine, The Daily Beast, The New York Times and Mediaite.
Conversely, Trump ripped the network news station that has given him the most favorable coverage – Fox News – for giving similar treatment to Florida’s conservative governor.
“FoxNews is promoting Ron DeSanctus so hard and so much that there’s not much time left for Real News,” Trump posted on Truth Social in February.
MEDIA WARMING UP TO TRUMP
The armistice between Trump and the Left-leaning press may be mutually beneficial. In a National Review article titled “Why Trump Can’t Win,” Andy McCarthy argues that the media are eager to push polls that show Trump ahead of DeSantis.
“Donald Trump cannot win a national election,” McCarthy writes. “It is in the interests of the media–Democratic complex to obscure this fact for now because Democrats desperately want Trump to be the Republican nominee.”
On Monday, news broke that Trump would participate in a presidential town hall on CNN – the network that has the most acrimonious history with the former president.
🚨Just in: President Donald Trump will participate in a CNN presidential town hall next week in New Hampshire. pic.twitter.com/eACWVQ0tAO
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) May 1, 2023
Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter who was among Trump’s top critics during his presidency, recently talked up his chances of recapturing the White House in 2024.
“I do think that he is stronger than people think,” Haberman said on The Hacks on Tap podcast in March. “I think that anybody who says, ‘He's done’ – that is clearly a mistake.”
