The apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy did some promotion for his employer in a Dec. 23 Newsmax article:
Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis and wife Casey share their all-American conservative Christmas in a Newsmax holiday special that aired Saturday.
Casey DeSantis and the couple’s three young children joined the governor in Iowa. In fact, the DeSantis kids — ages 7, 5, and 3 — saw snow for the first time recently in the state.
Florida’s first lady has appeared at campaign events and has also knocked on doors to help win over supporters for her husband.
“I want them to know about Ron DeSantis,” she told “Newsline” host Bianca de la Garza in an interview that aired in part on the Christmas special. “He is the real deal.
“When he says he’s going to do something, he gets it done. He delivers on 100% of his promises, and I think we as Republicans, we are tired of losing.
“He showed in the state of Florida that you can win and you can win big. And when he won by that largest landslide in the history of the state of Florida, [it] wasn’t just Republicans. It was independents and, indeed, Democrats were coming on board to support him because of his leadership. And so I want people to know that.”
This 19-minute special certainly has the feel of a campaign ad, complete with a Newsmax host feeding DeSantis and his wife softball questions — at one point, de la Garza gushed that DeSantis was “the ultimate family man.” Which raises the question: Did the DeSantis pay Newsmax to make this?
We’ve documented how Newsmax was accused by Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign of pushing a pay-for-play deal in which Newsmax would give the campaign more favorable coverage if it bought ads on Newsmax — and that Newsmax gave plenty of positive coverage to fringe candidate Perry Johnson, who had bought airtime on channel to run a reality-type show based on his campaign.
McCarthy did sneak in a little dig at how badly DeSantis was performing in Iowa, but let him spin it away:
Recent poll results for the 2024 GOP primary race found DeSantis trails former President Donald Trump by a wide margin in Iowa.
But, for many people in the state, brief personal interaction seems to make a difference.
“They are used to people coming to earn their vote, and it does make a difference,” DeSantis said.
Newsmax is, of course, aggressively pro-Trump, so this all may have been wasted money.