In March, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis laid the groundwork for his presidential run, he joined Fox News host Brian Kilmeade for a nationally televised game of catch at the baseball field in his hometown outside of Tampa.
The questions faced by Mr. DeSantis were as relaxed as the pitches.
“The locker room gets you ready for the press, doesn’t it?” Mr. Kilmeade he asked. “Because your teammates, if you really like them, rip you off all the time.”
At the time, Mr. DeSantis was seen by many in the Republican Party as the strongest possible alternative to former President Donald J. Trump, who had repeatedly attacked the network and seen its relationship with its owner, Rupert Murdoch.
Four months later, as the campaign of Mr. DeSantis failed to immediately fire Mr. Trump, Fox News is no longer taking it easy on Mr. DeSantis.
Over the past week, he has faced notably tougher questions in interviews with two of the network’s hosts, Will Cain and Maria Bartiromo, who pressed him on his anemic poll numbers and early campaign woes. It was a surprising turnaround for a network that has for years offered Mr. DeSantis a safe space as congressman and governor.
Other media of the media empire of Mr. Murdoch have also been a little less friendly of late.
A recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal criticized a tough immigration bill that mr. DeSantis signed in May. And The New York Post, which praised the governor as “Defuture” on his cover last year, he has covered his delayed survey numbersas well as the reaction to a video he shared of his campaign that was condemned as homophobic.
Mr. DeSantis was always bound to come under more scrutiny as a candidate, rather than a candidate-in-waiting. His decision to challenge Mr. Trump, who remains the favorite of Fox News’ audience and some of its hosts, including Mrs. Bartiromo — It was also certain that his fellow Republicans had a place on the sidelines.
But overall, signs of skepticism from once-friendly conservative mouthpieces suggest that Mr. Murdoch may now be reassessing it as the early luster fades from his campaign.
Even if the outlets of Mr. The Murdochs as a whole are less of a determinant of outcomes in Republican politics than they once were, remain influential, and GOP candidates and major party donors still pay close attention to their coverage.
It is not clear whether Mr. Murdoch wants to see Mr. DeSantis as a candidate. Some of the movements of Mr. DeSantis, like his ongoing punitive battle with Disney, is unlikely to have pleased the business-minded Mr. Murdoch, who nearly a decade ago called on federal officials to make immigration reform a priority.
The media mogul likes to watch political races play out, even live tweet reactions at one of the Republican presidential debates during the 2016 election. Mr. Murdoch has privately told people he would still like to see Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia enter the race, according to a person with knowledge of the statements. And he has made it clear in private conversations over the past two years that he thinks Mr. Trump, despite his popularity among Fox News viewers, is not healthy for the Republican Party.
A spokesman for Mr. Murdoch and a Fox spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The campaign of Mr. DeSantis declined to comment. Privately, his aides say tougher questions were always expected, and the governor plans to continue holding interviews with Fox hosts who might challenge him.
Republican voters view Mr. DeSantis in general, though has been unable to significantly narrow the poll gap between himself and Mr Trump since he entered the race, although he remains the former president’s main challenger. Mr. DeSantis has also continued to show an awkward side in unscripted exchanges where he is challenged, a contrast to Mr. Trump, a no-holds-barred campaigner who seems to enjoy combative interviews.
The tide hasn’t quite turned. Monday, Wall Street Journal editorial page he hit Mr. trump to adjust his political positions depending on the audience he is targeting, and gave Mr. DeSantis comparing it favorably.
For Fox, browsing its coverage of Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump and an already bitter Republican presidential primary race is just one challenge.
This spring, the network paid dearly for airing Mr. Trump, settling a defamation lawsuit related to his coverage of the 2020 presidential contest for a staggering $787.5 million. More legal perils lie ahead.
Less than a week after the deal, Fox fired Tucker Carlson, its most popular prime-time host, in an earthquake for the conservative media ecosystem. The network now faces lingering concerns about declining ratings and emerging competitors eager to siphon off Fox viewers who want a more pro-Trump viewpoint.
Although Mr. Trump still appears on Fox News, his relationship with the network remains hostile, with people close to him saying there is little chance he will participate in the first Republican presidential debate, which Fox News hosts on next month (Mr. Trump, who leads the national polls for approximately 30 percentage pointsnor does he want to give his rivals a chance to attack him personally, these people said.)
Mr. DeSantis, who typically avoids one-on-one interviews with mainstream political reporters, has a long and positive history with Fox News.
As a congressman, he co-hosted the show “Outnumbered” several times. In 2018, he announced his run for governor on “Fox & Friends.” During the coronavirus pandemic, Fox News’ Sean Hannity praised Mr. DeSantis in an interview, saying, “I’m an idiot. It should be in Florida. You should be my governor.”
And after declaring his candidacy for the presidency in a live stream on Twitter seven weeks ago, Mr. DeSantis immediately went to Fox for an interview, though the network did. make fun of given its technical difficulties.
The same Mr. Trump was enraged earlier this year over what he perceived as Fox’s overly friendly treatment of Mr. DeSantis. “Just watching Fox News. They are so bad,” Trump wrote on his TruthSocial site in May. “They’re desperately pushing DeSanctimonious who, regardless, is dropping like a rock.”
He has also done research in The New York Post features, including one in which writer Salena Zito made a long interview with Mr. DeSantis in his hometown of Dunedin, Florida, an article Mr. trump denounced like a “puff piece”. (The Post, once one of Mr. Trump’s favorite papers, has ripped him.)
Mr. Trump was no doubt more pleased last Thursday when Mr. Cain, the Fox host, pressed Mr. DeSantis about his poll numbers, asking the governor why he was so far behind.
In response, Mr. DeSantis suggested he was being unfairly attacked both by the “corporate media” and, somewhat incongruously, by Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has criticized him for his tough positions on immigration.
“So I think if you look at all these people who are responsible for a lot of the ills in our society, they point to me as the person they don’t want to see as a candidate,” explained Mr. DeSantis, and added. that his campaign had “just begun”.
Mr. Cain tried again, saying he believed Mr. DeSantis had “done a wonderful job” as governor, but that “some people say there’s something about you that doesn’t connect, for whatever reason, doesn’t connect with the voter.”
Mr. DeSantis deflected the question, noting that his campaign had raised $20 million in its first six weeks.
“We’re in the process of building a great organization, and I think we’ll be on the ground in all those early states,” he said.
Mr. Cain is not a Trump supporter. He talked about it voting against Mr. trump in 2016. But when Mr. DeSantis joined Ms. Bartiromo, who has relentlessly pushed the former president’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, for an interview on Sunday, he surely expected to be challenged.
“You’ve done a great job railing against the ‘woke’, we know,” Ms. Bartiromo said after allowing Mr. DeSantis hit on his usual talking points for a few minutes. “But I wonder what’s going on with your campaign. There was a lot of optimism about your run for the presidency earlier this year.”
Mr. DeSantis forced a laugh as Ms. Bartiromo read negative headlines about his campaign. He then jumped into a rebuttal that focused on his efforts to build strong organizational operations in Iowa and New Hampshire.
“Maria, these are narratives,” he said. “The media don’t want me to be the nominee.”
Jonathan Swan contributed reporting from Washington.
