By Today Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that he is seeking the 2024 Republican nomination for president. His announcement has made liberals and Never Trumpers, the latter dependent on Trump being the Republican presidential nominee to keep their gravy train rolling, completely bonkers.
While much of the sniping from the anti-DeSantis crowd was predictable, Vanity Fair showed just how deluded the media has become.
The magazine ran a story with the following headline: “Ron DeSantis Will Formally Announce His 2024 Bid With Elon Musk, Because Apparently David Duke Wasn’t Available.”
Outkick explains, “Vanity Fair, a once prestigious media outlet, printed following the news DeSantis would announce his run for president to Elon Musk on Twitter.
David Duke, of course, is a former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. That is to whom the corporate media now likens Musk.
You might ask what facts Vanity Fair cited to declare Musk a neo-Nazi white supremacist. Unfortunately, the author did not provide any.
In fact, the piece didn’t even mention Duke. Rather, it was a cheaply-written aggregation piece that copy and pasted a news write-up from NBC.”
The author of the VF article, Bess Levin, has a strange obsession with Musk and is very upset that Tucker Carlson is allowed to post videos on Twitter.
Joining along with the media, following the official launch of DeSantis 2024, the Daily Caller writes, “The Trump campaign plans to unleash an “all-out assault” following Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Wednesday announcement, while Team DeSantis plans to go all 10 rounds, associates close to both of the GOP contenders told the Daily Caller.
On the same day that Trump associates told the Daily Caller that they intended to ‘rip’ DeSantis’ ‘head off,’ an associate friendly with DeSantis’ campaign said he planned to do the “rope-a-dope,” a boxing term in which you allow your opponent to throw so many punches, he tires himself out.
DeSantis is likely to continue holding back and taking his shots more carefully though, associates say.
“While Donald Trump uses a shotgun, Ron DeSantis uses a scalpel,” Republican strategist John Thomas agreed. Thomas also noted that it would be a “mistake” for DeSantis to continue to be quiet once he announces, predicting he will “rebut the broadside attacks” coming from the former president.
The attacks that DeSantis does unleash will likely be focused on Trump’s approach to COVID-19 vaccines and Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Chris Nelson, a reporter who is vocal about DeSantis online and friendly with his campaign.
Although many in the Trump camp have talked about an aggressive campaign and how much they’re ready to “take his head off,” Trump shared an article that begged DeSantis to stay out of the race and just let the former president win.
https://t.co/be2aEQLAZu pic.twitter.com/ykSrZgAF4k
— Peter Cook (@_Peter_Cook) May 18, 2023
NEW: Donald Trump reacts to news of DeSantis officially announcing tomorrow, reposting an article saying "please STAND DOWN for the good for the GOP," indicating the governor presents no threat at all and is severely down in the polls pic.twitter.com/c4d3ddg1on
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 23, 2023
Mediate noted, “Former President Donald Trump shared an article from MAGA radio host Wayne Allyn Root pleading with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) not to run for president in 2024 after news dropped that DeSantis was set to announce on Wednesday.
While Trump did not comment directly on DeSantis’s imminent candidacy, sharing Root’s article was notable given its tone. The article, titled, “Ron DeSantis, Please STAND DOWN for the Good of the GOP and America,” begins with Root declaring his undying loyalty to Trump.
DeSantis, who has been at the receiving end of attacks from Trump for months now, clearly isn’t heading Root’s advice and has become a bit less shy in recent weeks in hitting back at Trump. Trump has attacked DeSantis for everything from his fight with Disney to being disloyal for running against him to even suggesting he groomed teenage girls.
In recent weeks, DeSantis has responded to those attacks indirectly by saying the GOP must no longer embrace a ‘culture of losing.’
In mid-May, DeSantis told reporters,’“Governing is not about entertaining. Governing is not about building a brand or talking on social media and virtue signaling. It’s ultimately about winning and producing results.’”
Even the man himself had this bizarre comment about DeSantis’s campaign launch.
I think we may have finally lost him. pic.twitter.com/rc8ywjnIff
— Philippe Lemoine (@phl43) May 24, 2023
Now that DeSantis is officially in, we should expect mainstream media and Trump to work hand in glove to knock out the Florida challenger, who is both a threat to Biden and Trump.
Michael Brendan Dougherty explained recently how this has worked so far and how the intimidation from both groups failed to keep the Florida governor from throwing his hat in the ring by making up fake controversies
First it was that he gave Tucker Carlson an explanation of his views on Ukraine, namely that it wasn’t a chief American priority. Next it was a rumor of a fund-raiser getting spooked. Then Donald Trump was wooing Florida legislators to endorse him. Soon we were told that the governor’s fight with Disney was “dragging on” and making him look bad. Fake, fake, fake, fake. These stories, mostly sourced to DeSantis rivals and then repeated endlessly, have created a psychic whirlpool on social media meant to sink the DeSantis candidacy before it begins. Today this effort is shown to have failed, and the dynamic tide will shift quickly once DeSantis announces and begins energetically campaigning.
DeSantis is expected to launch with eye-popping fund-raising numbers. Before launch he’s secured more than a third of the available endorsements in Iowa’s state legislature. He seems to have the support of Bob Vander Plaats, a potential Iowa kingmaker. And he has the backing of 99 out of 113 Republican lawmakers in the Florida state legislature. As for Disney, while the New York Times headline made it look like the Mouse had canceled the movement of 2,000 jobs from California to Florida for political reasons, reporters on the Disney beat quickly corrected. Former CEO Bob Chapek’s plan to move those jobs to Florida was widely opposed within the company because it would take creatives away from the Hollywood studio. If anything, Disney’s and Pixar’s lackluster performance at the box office, slashed revenue projections for Disney+, along with lower foot traffic at the parks indicate that perhaps it is conservatives alienated by Disney who are, in part, driving the company to make unwelcome decisions.
It took a lot of willfulness on the part of the media to forget that in a year when many Republicans underperformed, DeSantis beat expectations in Florida by roughly ten points and won the state by 20 altogether.
Among Republicans, DeSantis has similar favorability ratings to Donald Trump, despite being less well known. In fact, that is also an advantage for DeSantis because almost 30 percent of adults in February 2023 didn’t have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Florida governor. These are people he can win over. Trump’s numbers are already locked in. Early polling has shown that Trump has a weakness with Evangelical voters, who were so crucial in supporting his first nomination. Trump also has a weakness with Republicans who have college degrees and with upwardly mobile suburban voters, the ones with the highest propensity to vote in primaries. These are voters who had trouble supporting Ted Cruz in 2016 as a Trump alternative, but they seem to show no hesitation about DeSantis.
Trump is running an incumbent campaign on the faulty premise that he won the 2020 election and was cheated out of the prize. But incumbents who command less than 90 percent of the party tend to lose in the end.
Neither Trump or DeSantis are going to go down without a fight, both from each other and the media who hope to sink both in order to protect an unpopular Democratic president.
Conservatives who want for the country something better than what we currently have should embrace the upcoming political battle. Steel sharpens steel, after all.
Game on. May the best candidate win.
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