The 2024 Republican presidential primary has begun, and One America News Network’s longstanding hesitancy to get involved in the coming fight between former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appears to be crumbling. Although DeSantis still enjoys positive coverage from the right-wing network, it is now mostly for his role as governor — for DeSantis’ prospects as a presidential candidate, OAN is beginning to raise the specter of the swamp. 

While a rivalry between the two men brewed for months, OAN strove to play both sides, transparently supporting Trump while also lavishing praise on DeSantis as governor. OAN even attempted to cast the growing feud as an establishment plot to fracture the so-called America First movement, essentially telling DeSantis to wait his turn for a run at the presidency. OAN’s general attitude can perhaps best be summed up by founder Robert Herring’s 2022 comment that “we support DeSantis as a vice president.”

However, recent events have seemingly heralded the end for any hopes of OAN’s neutrality in the GOP primary. On February 7, DeSantis hosted an event about “the damaging impacts of defamation from the legacy media,” featuring attorney Elizabeth “Libby” Locke, who the governor called “an extraordinaire when it comes to First Amendment defamation.” Locke’s firm also represents Dominion Voting Systems in its various defamation suits against right-wing media — including OAN — for spreading pro-Trump election lies that falsely implicate the company in the nonexistent plot to steal the 2020 election. These lies were spread by multiple network personalities and guests, and OAN has already recanted other false election fraud allegations after settling a different defamation suit. 

On February 14, Real America host Dan Ball advanced the network’s unofficial position of Trump now, DeSantis later into more confrontational territory, showcasing a Trumpian sense of grievance and disloyalty. 

Referring to DeSantis’ 2018 campaign for governor, Ball asked the audience, “Would DeSantis have been the powerhouse he was at that time and became, if it were not for Trump’s help? I don’t think so. And so is it a slap in the face to the man who helped build you up — who you’ve kind of emulated the last four years in office — to then run against him?”

Hinting at a sense of disappointment, Ball conceded that “it’s America, it’s a capitalist society. You do what you want.” 

But Ball didn’t leave it there. 

“This attorney is just a for-profit opportunist,” he complained. “And so for Ron to be hitching his post to someone like that — yeah, I don’t know about that.” 

Ball’s guest, Republican strategist Alex Bruesewitz, said “it’s reprehensible” that DeSantis would invite a Dominion attorney and champion her free speech commitments. 

“Not only was it a slap in the face to President Trump,” Bruesewitz griped, “but it was a slap in the face to tens of millions of MAGA voters who had concerns about the 2020 election.” “It’s just evident that Ron DeSantis thinks the 2020 election was fine and dandy,” he concluded — a serious allegation on a network so dedicated to election misinformation.

Although OAN is slowly turning up the heat on DeSantis’ nascent presidential campaign, the channel has been awash in praise for his record as governor. In the last two months alone, the network blessed him with positive coverage for attacking an AP African American History course, sending undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities, his laissez faire response to COVID-19, announcing “the biggest tax relief plan in Florida history,” and much more. Even while criticizing his presidential ambitions, Ball acknowledged: “Ron’s done great things for Florida. I won’t bash him there.” 

OAN will often cut to DeSantis’ live remarks on a range of topics, including the state budget and education policy, giving his comments a vague air of presidentialism. OAN also reports on seemingly minor updates in the governor’s life, such as his plans to speak at the Reagan presidential library to promote his upcoming book. Another nearly three-minute OAN report on DeSantis’ opposition to COVID-19 mandates featured only three sentences from the correspondent, including his sign off — the rest was a clip of a DeSantis speech. 

Despite OAN’s appreciation for DeSantis’ record as governor, the network’s preference for Trump is clear. OAN covers many of the former president’s Truth Social posts and videos about the 2024 campaign or anything else as newsworthy statements, including his insults against DeSantis as a “RINO globalist” who Trump claimed had cried and begged for his 2018 endorsement. OAN also covered Trump calling his former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley “overly ambitious,” paired with a Trump monologue about the strength of his poll performance.

Although Haley and Trump are the only currently declared GOP candidates for the 2024 presidential campaign, it is Trump and DeSantis who still dominate OAN programming. Ball covered Haley’s recent announcement video on his February 14 episode and pretended to fall asleep during it. 

“You better turn up the energy if you plan on having any chance,” he advised. “Which, obviously, you don’t.” 

In Focus host Addison Smith later laughed off Haley’s campaign, saying, “We all know that that’s not going anywhere,” but framed DeSantis’ potential challenge to Trump as “the elephant in the room.”

Lately, OAN’s primary coverage may have begun to calcify around an anti-DeSantis line by implying that he’s too close to the swamp. 

Discussing the expected campaign with Bruesewitz on February 14, Ball commented that “those same people that were controlling and buying candidates for decades [are] now starting to get behind Ron DeSantis.” 

Bruesewitz agreed, saying, “I also think you’re going to see a lot of these people lining up behind Nikki Haley.” The guest accused DeSantis of “cozying up to the likes of Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, the entire neocon swamp that hates President Trump, that hates the movement.”

Concerned that people who “make millions of dollars from political office” — like DeSantis, with his upcoming book — ”can be swayed” by the sources of that money, Ball said that they “can’t be trusted 100%.” He then reiterated his support for Trump as “somebody who already had the money, where the folks with money that can’t buy them off, that's the guy I'll take every day of the week.”

At times, OAN coverage has pitted Trump directly against President Joe Biden, treating the other primary candidates as afterthoughts in the 2024 race. 

Discussing the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and Biden’s recent visit to Ukraine, Smith claimed on February 20 that there was “no better picture of America first vs. America last,” saying Biden was announcing more funding for Ukraine’s “forever war” while “your primary rival, your former president, Donald Trump, is going to Ohio to take care of American citizens.” The other GOP candidates came up as a secondary topic for just the final two minutes of the segment, with guest Anthony Sabatini repeating attacks on DeSantis as the “interventionalist” choice of the GOP establishment and declaring: “When it comes to the big three ones — trade, immigration, and war — I trust Donald Trump far more than I do DeSantis or anyone else in the field.”

Admitting that DeSantis’ record as governor has been “very good” on some issues, Sabatini then seemingly summed up OAN’s entire position going into the 2024 race, concluding simply: “I’m a Trump guy.” 

There is no doubt that OAN likes DeSantis despite growing concerns about his closeness to the Republican establishment. It is likely that the network would be happy with him in the White House, but it is clear that OAN supports Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024 over any other candidate -- and it's hard to imagine that ever changing.