This reporting appears as one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
Far-right channel One America News (OAN)–currently in the midst of an existential crisis—may be cartoonishly loyal in its efforts to boost all things Donald Trump, but it appears as though the network’s founder and boss is playing footsie with the ex-president’s top potential 2024 primary rival.
According to Florida election filings shared with Confider by the liberal American Bridge 21st Century PAC, OAN founder and CEO Robert Herring earlier this month cut a $20,000 check to Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC, the Florida governor’s state-level political action committee currently boosting his re-election campaign.
The donation is especially notable considering OAN and Herring’s unyielding loyalty to Trump and the many ways in which the former president has quietly stewed over the emergence of DeSantis as a wannabe heir to the MAGA throne.
As The Daily Beast has reported, the mere prospect of a Trump vs. DeSantis 2024 race has already begun to create rival factions among right-wing media diehards.
When asked about the donation, Herring emailed Confider: “It means that we support De Santis as a vice President. I believe that President Trump was the greatest President in My eighty years.”
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