Tag: Ron

What the world looks like to Ron DeSantis

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DeSantis’ team didn’t return requests for comment about his worldview. But Christina Pushaw, a DeSantis ally, noted that as the leader of Florida, the world’s 13th largest economy, “he meets with world leaders and policy experts all the time. He consumes a lot of information and is very much hands-on in terms of policy.”
Those around DeSantis say the former Navy lawyer who deployed to Guantanamo Bay and Iraq is still soaking in information, reading as much as he can on national security issues. DeSantis doesn’t yet have a coterie of formal foreign policy advisers, but that’s expected to come after he officially declares his candidacy for president.
What can be gleaned so far is this: DeSantis promotes U.S. strength in the world, but with limits on when to engage and with a prioritization to fixing problems at home. The result is this: Go big and stay home.
In foreign-policy-speak, he’s not a “Wilsonian” seeking to remake the world in America’s image, but he’s not fully a populist “Jacksonian,” either. And by walking that middle line, he could gain the advantage in 2024 over other Republican candidates who fit more firmly into one category or the other.
As a House Foreign Affairs Committee member from 2017 to 2019, DeSantis took vintage Republican positions that made defense hawks and traditionalists rejoice. He supported sending lethal aid to Ukraine and labeled himself part of the “Reagan school that’s tough on Russia.” He voted to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. He praised Trump’s diplomatic outreach to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He told then-Fox Business host Lou Dobbs that Barack Obama’s push for an Iran nuclear deal persuaded Sunni Arabs to join the Islamic State.
But in the House, he occasionally flicked at a belief that America should refrain from delving into global matters of war and peace until a clear plan was in place to secure U.S. interests. His thoughts are with service members, not the elites who want to send them into battle.
“I constantly hear people say Americans are war weary, and I disagree with that. I think Americans are willing to do what it takes to defend our people and our nation,” he said during a 2014 floor debate about how the U.S. could defeat the Islamic State. “They are weary of missions launched without a coherent strategy and are sick of seeing engagements that produce inconclusive results rather than clear-cut victory.”
DeSantis argued against arming Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar Assad for that reason. “They cannot be counted on to vindicate our interests,” he said in that address, adding “there are no shortcuts when it comes to our national defense.”

Plenty in the Republican old-guard argue DeSantis is playing politics. Whether he firmly holds these views or is angling for votes, his approach could be a winning one in 2024. The conventional wisdom in Washington is that Americans don’t vote on foreign policy, but with the war in Ukraine unlikely to end soon and the increasing threats from China, this could be one cycle where the electorate is thinking more about the world.
The average Republican voter wants a leader who focuses on the physical defense of the United States and extracts the nation from unnecessary or counterproductive foreign entanglements. They are less interested in solving others’ issues or values promotion. DeSantis’ statements and positions broaden his appeal within the party and segments of the trans-partisan anti-war movement.
DeSantis has often cited the work of Angelo Codevilla, a conservative, Jacksonian-minded scholar who argued that the U.S. government was dangerously run by an unelected liberal ruling class that spurned popular sentiment. These officials hampered America’s policies at home and abroad, Codevilla argued, and his disdain for bureaucrats remains alive and well with DeSantis.
“The United States has been increasingly captive to an arrogant, stale, and failed ruling class,” DeSantis wrote in his book, “The Courage to be Free.” The elites, he continued, helped China rise by giving the country “most favored nation” trade status; “supported military adventurism around the world without clear objectives or prospect for victory” and “weaponized the national security apparatus by manufacturing the Russian collusion conspiracy theory.”
It sounds like Trump’s “deep state” complaint. But where Trump says that bureaucracy thwarts his designs — though he would often listen to them — DeSantis says this ruling class ignores what everyday Americans want. The Florida governor effectively vows not to listen to the professionals who have championed the Iraq war, opened trade with China and launched ill-fated democracy promotion projects.
When DeSantis’ skepticism of D.C. elites aligns with Trump, there’s an air of “We told you so.”
The governor told conservative host Glenn Beck last week about a trip he took to Tel Aviv as Trump considered moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. DeSantis said he asked State Department and CIA officials there what would happen if the then-president went through with it. “World War III, World War III, World War III,” he heard back.
Deadly violence did erupt after Trump moved the mission, but the apocalyptic predictions didn’t come true. DeSantis subsequently expressed deep skepticism at the experts running U.S. foreign policy. “They’re just entrenched and they have groupthink,” he told Beck.
DeSantis has made support for Israel central to his foreign policy, traveling there four times as a member of Congress and governor. He moved to stop companies from boycotting Israel and suggested working on a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians isn’t worth the effort.
“[Americans] are weary of missions launched without a coherent strategy and are sick of seeing engagements that produce inconclusive results rather than clear-cut victory.”
Then-Rep. Ron DeSantis in a 2014 floor debate
DeSantis further criticized opponents of Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in that interview. Without ending U.S. involvement in the pact, he said, the Abraham Accords — the normalization agreements between Israel and Arab-majority states — would never have happened.
But the governor, by virtue of the state he leads, has sounded like a pre-Trump Republican on Latin American politics. He’s a critic of the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes, boosting dissidents’ calls for weakening their autocratic left-wing governments. Last July, he accused President Joe Biden of failing “to assist the Cuban people in their fight for freedom.”
DeSantis did, however, send Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard last year, an effort aligned with Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott to place the burdens of immigration on Democratic states that critics derided as a political stunt.
The foreign policy position that has received the most attention is how the governor thinks about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At first glance, it seems like he’s siding with Trump, but he comes at it differently, aligning himself with Kyiv’s plight while mindful of the toll U.S. commitment to the conflict could take at home and on global security.
DeSantis wrote in his statement to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that “without question, peace should be the objective.” It was an argument that the danger was delving deeper into the “territorial dispute” between Ukraine and Russia. Sending F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles, “would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.”
But DeSantis expanded on his answer in an interview a week later with Piers Morgan in which he struck more traditional Republican notes: Ukraine has “the right to that territory … If I could snap my fingers, I’d give it back to Ukraine 100 percent.” Putin, he continued, “is a war criminal” and “he should be held accountable.”
Just last year, DeSantis boasted about helping to get funding while in Congress for “a lot of weapons for Ukraine to be able to defend themselves.”
But DeSantis’ thinking has certainly been shifting in a more populist direction.
“It’s been a slow reorientation of foreign policy on the right,” said David Reaboi, a fellow at the Claremont Institute who has spoken informally with DeSantis about national security issues. “We ended up walking away from what should be our basic concern: the immediate security and needs of the American people.”
Likely future opponents are hammering the argument that it’s all for show. “President Trump is right when he says Governor DeSantis is copying him — first in his style, then on entitlement reform, and now on Ukraine,” Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador who has officially entered the presidential race, said following DeSantis’ Ukraine statement.
Allies note DeSantis is focused on the same issues as other leading Republicans: curbing China’s aggression in the military, economic and technological arenas, securing the U.S.-Mexico border and ending the scourge of fentanyl.
Where he distinguishes himself from some other 2024 hopefuls is he’d rather restrict the nation’s resources to tackling those challenges — because they most immediately reflect the needs of everyday Americans — instead of policing the world or opening the political space in other nations for small-d democrats to flourish.
As DeSantis put it in his book: “Does the survival of American liberty depend on whether liberty succeeds in Djibouti?”
Gary Fineout contributed to this report.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 24, 2023
Never Don and Never Ron: The rest of the GOP field looks for a third lane

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“Ron DeSantis is copying Donald Trump on Ukraine, entitlement reform, and who knows what’s next?” Haley adviser Nachama Soloveichik said in a statement to POLITICO, describing the former South Carolina governor as “a leader on these serious issues facing our country’s future” who “will continue to note her differences with both Republicans and Democrats who want to bury their heads in the sand.”
“Republicans deserve a choice, not a copycat,” Soloveichik said.
A spokesperson for DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The result has been a subterranean primary campaign within the primary campaign: a battle for a third-ranking spot in the Republican nominating contest. It is a position that could attract a smaller coalition of traditional conservatives — as the former president and DeSantis fish from the same pond of more populist-minded GOP voters — but one that could provide an outside chance of winning.
Haley this week placed an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal decrying “the weakness from some on the right” concerning Ukraine, while criticizing DeSantis’ “backward” suggestion that the conflict is a “territorial dispute.” In recent days, the former UN Ambassador has taken to Fox News to bash both Trump and DeSantis on the topic. “Trump is wrong in this way,” she told Brian Kilmeade, in what constituted a rare public rebuke of her former boss. She added, for good measure, that “DeSantis is completely wrong on this.”
DeSantis, who in Congress was hawkish on aid to Ukraine, last week announced his public position against continued military support for the country following pressure from Trump and his allies to take a stance on the issue. And despite previously supporting raising the retirement age and privatizing Social Security, DeSantis has more recently joined Trump in saying the programs like it and Medicare shouldn’t be touched.
For his part, Pence has deliberately sought to display contrasts with Trump and DeSantis perhaps more than any other competitor likely to enter the field.
“Mike has always been a limited government, consistent, constitutional conservative,” said Marc Short, Pence’s top adviser. “Voters and donors appreciate that consistency.”

On Tuesday evening at Washington & Lee University in Virginia, Pence sought to distinguish himself from Trump and DeSantis by calling for “common sense and compassionate” entitlement reforms. Echoing the more traditional GOP position, he told reporters he could not “endorse voices in our party today that simply want to walk past the problem of national debt by pledging to never touch Social Security and Medicare.”
The attempt to differentiate themselves from Trump and DeSantis is unlikely to result in an immediate surge of new support for either Haley or Pence, GOP operatives predict. But should Trump’s campaign crumble in the face of multiple indictments, and DeSantis fails to gain traction, it could set them up as fallback options and more traditional Republican leaders.
“You have to hold onto a narrative line that separates you from the populism of Trump,” said Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based political strategist. “I think they have to do it. And it’s a healthy thing, a sign that there’s a heartbeat in the Republican Party.”
The distinctions haven’t just been drawn around entitlements and Ukraine. Pence has also expressed disagreement with DeSantis’ revoking of Disney’s special tax status, calling it “beyond the scope of what I as a conservative, a limited government Republican, would be prepared to do.”
On the matter of Trump’s Supreme Court appointments and last summer’s anti-abortion ruling, Pence has taken a victory lap on the issue in ways his former boss hasn’t. When the ruling came down, Pence issued a statement saying “we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land.”
While Pence’s Tuesday night event highlighted his position on entitlement reforms, Haley has also openly called for changing Social Security and Medicare before solvency issues force cuts in the coming years.
She has suggested raising the retirement age for younger generations, cutting benefits for the wealthy, adjusting benefits based on inflation and expanding the Medicare Advantage program, which relies on private insurers. Trump has long balked at touching the programs. DeSantis, meanwhile, has reversed his support as a congressman for restructuring them.
It’s a risky bet for Haley and Pence to frame themselves at odds with Trump’s policies, even as foreign intervention and fiscal responsibility are policy positions that the pair have previously championed.
Republican primary voters now tend to be more skeptical of continued Ukraine aid, according to a new Morning Consult poll that found 46% believe supporting Ukraine is “not a vital U.S. interest.” GOP sentiment on the issue has changed dramatically in the last year. Still, more than one-third of the GOP, 37 percent, say it’s in the United States’ interest to support the country’s defense against Russia.
Paul Shumaker, a Republican pollster in North Carolina, also said staking out different positions from the frontrunners on issues like foreign policy and entitlement reform “is not enough to get you to a winning coalition.” But, he added, it could come in handy if the GOP field dramatically shifts in the coming months and the stakes become higher with the war in Ukraine.
“It could be very smart politics come the end of this year,” Shumaker said. “Just depends on what happens in the spirit of global affairs” — and whether the continued conflict “puts us into a new Cold War mentality” as seen during elections in the 1960s and 1980s.
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#Don #Ron #rest #GOP #field #lane
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 23, 2023
Who said it: Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump?

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis is often called “Trump 2.0” for his embrace of conservative policies and his take-no-prisoners style of politics.
And ahead of the 2024 presidential election — as both Florida men vie to lead the party and ultimately the nation — they have openly feuded over Covid-19 and vaccines and whether DeSantis is truly loyal to the former president, whose 2018 endorsement helped the Florida governor win election.
But the men are also very similar in their approach to issues like critical race theory, China and especially their criticism of Democrats and President Joe Biden.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 18, 2023
Opinion | The Ousted Reporter Was Right to Call Out Ron DeSantis’ Propaganda

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As is usual in personnel matters like this, Axios has confirmed Montgomery no longer works there. But as Poynter’s Tom Jones reports, Axios won’t explain why. Were there extenuating circumstances behind Montgomery’s departure? If so, the reporting from Poynter, the Washington Post, the Wrap, the New York Post, Creative Loafing Tampa Bay and Fox News has failed to uncover such evidence. For all we know, Montgomery may be a menace to society and in need of home detention and 24-hour surveillance. But I think not. Until greater resolution arrives, we can proceed on the assumption that a very good reporter got bumped off 1) for doing what reporters do every day; and 2) for doing what reporters are supposed to do.
It’s easy to take Montgomery’s side in this dispute. Flacks have never been in the truth-telling business, a non-controversial observation that doesn’t need to be defended. From public relations’ earliest days, the flack’s job has been to bathe the client in the cool flattery of the north light and undermine anybody who opposes him. Call it advocacy, call it persuasion, call it spin or call it propaganda, but a flack’s primary job is to frame selected facts into a context that will make his client shine. Ask any salesman.
Most government press releases contain a dose of propaganda, a statement that doesn’t need much defending, either. Government press releases are designed to present information that will advance the agency’s political point. We depend on reporters to puncture this flackery, to do additional reporting and to give readers the full story the government spokesmen deliberately elide. This requires reporters to push back when a politician’s staff dumps a load of manure in a press release and then expects the press to choke it down like hot butter biscuits. Just set aside for a moment your politics and your personal views on DEI and DeSantis and read the press release Montgomery teed off on. Then decide for yourself whether its aim was to honestly explore an issue or to spin coverage to the benefit of a predetermined agenda.
If Montgomery’s response to the press release strikes you as histrionic, be advised that histrionics run both ways in the mongoose and cobra war. Government flacks often give reporters the bluest and darkest tongue-lashings when news stories run that displease them. Many of these tirades make Montgomery’s email response look like a curtsy in comparison. It’s only natural for source-reporter relations to sometimes grow tense if the goal is to find news. The real worry is when sources and reporters get too cozy and the tough questions stop coming. When that happens, the news turns to mush.
Now, as a matter of etiquette — and in order to maintain a working relationship that will benefit readers — it’s best for journalists to toughen their hides and refrain from overreacting when a flack distributes propaganda or material of marginal newsworthiness. The key to pushing back is not to put the flack “in his place” but to elicit valuable information for readers. “The world would be better off if more reporters responded to more politicians’ press releases with, ‘This isn’t news and don’t waste my time with this drivel,’” my former editor Garrett M. Graff tells me.
Along these same lines, can we persuade more flacks to wear body armor? Most of the PR people I’ve worked with in my career have not been as brittle and vengeful as DeSantis and his press people appear to have been in their press relations. I know of no PR person who is such a delicate flower that they turn furious if I called a communique from their office “propaganda.” Most would smile and say, “That’s my job.” How necessary was it for the Florida flacks to turn this skirmish into a battle royale that cost Montgomery his job? Of course, fueling a maelstrom may have been precisely the point: It gave DeSantis another opportunity to show off to the GOP’s press-loathing base as he prepares to jump into the 2024 presidential race.
That said, there’s no reason to inflate this skirmish into a case of martyrdom for Montgomery. Nor is there any evidence that he seeks such a benediction. “I regret being so short,” Montgomery said. “In the style of Axios, I used smart brevity and it cost me.”
Pushing back is an essential part of journalism, as Jim VandeHei, Axios co-founder, accomplished journalist, and a former big boss of mine here at POLITICO, recently wrote in Axios. VandeHei recounts the time about a decade ago when things had soured between POLITICO and Roger Ailes of Fox News. As a POLITICO executive, VandeHei attempted to quiet the waters, but nothing worked. Then in 2013, a POLITICO piece made Ailes fume and holler at VandeHei in a phone call, his response being the sort you might receive from a furious flack. VandeHei offered this retort:

“Roger, go fuck yourself.”
Ailes’ screaming continued until he hung up.
VandeHei did the right thing that day. And he wasn’t fired for doing it.
Message to flacks: Send flowers or email to [email protected]. Or have me fired for my impudence. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed wears body armor. My Mastodon and Post accounts think life is a Montessori school. My RSS feed floats like a mongoose and stings like a cobra.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 17, 2023
Ron DeSantis has a Florida problem

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In the run-up to the primary, DeSantis solidified his place as Trump’s chief rival for the nomination largely based on an electability argument. He was MAGA, like Trump, but without the former president’s baggage or toxicity to moderate Republicans and independents — the kind of voters Republicans will need to run Joe Biden from the White House next year.
But as DeSantis edges closer to announcing, he is testing the limits of how hard right he can go without undermining his rationale for running in the first place. It’s a significant risk in a primary in which Republican voters — sore from losing the White House in 2020 and a less-than-red-wave midterm two years later — are desperate to nominate a candidate who can win.
“In a way, the Republican dominance of the Florida Legislature may end up hurting DeSantis because his proposals can become reality,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona. “That may help him in a primary in Iowa or Texas or South Dakota, but in a general election in Arizona, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, it could be ruinous for him.”
That fear isn’t lost on Republican primary voters, either. In hypothetical matchups with Biden in a Morning Consult poll this week, DeSantis fared no better than Trump, with each trailing the incumbent Democrat by 1 percentage point. Moreover, when asked in a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll who had the best chance of winning in 2024, DeSantis didn’t stand out against Trump, either, with about as many Republicans and Republican-leaning independents naming Trump as DeSantis. That is a major shift from December, when far more Republicans viewed DeSantis as the more electable Republican.
“[DeSantis has] this huge advantage in the Florida legislature and the ability to pretty much write his script for the next year in terms of policy direction,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “But that may not turn out to be a blessing, ultimately.”
After the U.S. Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade DeSantis said he was in favor of additional restrictions but as his reelection drew closer he declined to say exactly what he would support. When the ban on abortions after six weeks — albeit with exceptions — was filed last week DeSantis told reporters “I think those exceptions are sensible and like I said we welcome pro life legislation.”
A DeSantis spokesperson declined to comment. But a top Republican consultant in Tallahassee, who was granted anonymity to talk freely about DeSantis, said there is a logic behind the governor’s moves.
“The bottom line is that if he decides to run he wants to have the most robust cultural and policy conservative list of accomplishments,” said the consultant. “This makes him impervious to hits from the right.”

DeSantis may have little choice but to pull further to the right on some key issues for the base. In a modern GOP that has seen Republicans with decades of conservative credentials exorcized as “Republicans-In-Name-Only” at Trump’s behest, DeSantis has, through his hard-line politics, avoided being cast by Trump as weak or low energy. Instead, Trump has portrayed him as an imitator, telling reporters DeSantis was “following what I am saying” on Ukraine. With Trump still leading the field and several other Republicans expected to join the campaign, DeSantis will likely have to cut into some of Trump’s support to beat him in the primary.
With his six-week abortion ban, DeSantis appears to be making that precise play. Evangelical voters scoffed at Trump after he blamed the GOP’s focus on the “abortion issue” for losses in the midterms. That constituency is especially significant in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state that DeSantis and Trump both visited in recent days.
Bob Vander Plaats, the evangelical leader in Iowa who is influential in primary politics in the first-in-the-nation caucus state and who was a national co-chair of Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign in 2016, pointed out that Iowa is “a very pro-life state today, and part of that is Gov. [Kim] Reynolds has been a champion for the sanctity of human life and she won by an overwhelming margin in 2022”
He said DeSantis is wise to be “stressing his bonafides” on the issue and that DeSantis’ six-week ban “will be in [DeSantis’s] favor, quite frankly, and it would put him on equal footing with Gov. Reynolds here in the state of Iowa, which is a good place to be.”
But even Republicans acknowledge it will likely come at a cost, after Democrats successfully used abortion as a cudgel against their party in the midterm elections, following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“If you’re running for president, you ain’t got no choice,” said Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party and adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “On the abortion issue, if you don’t go as far right as the oxygen will allow you to go, it’s a vulnerability in a Republican primary. That’s just life.”
One New York Republican, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party primary dynamics, said a six-week ban viewed as unpalatably restrictive to some will be considered too weak by some anti-abortion rights purists in the right wing of the GOP.
“This position is so scrutinized that you’ll lose a core constituency in allowing for any abortion at any time,” said the person, who is partial to Trump. “Six weeks sounds like the middle ground that a political operative would advise you to take. Six weeks is not what the Christian right voters will accept. There is a definite bifurcation between political realities and politically paid staffers.”
For his part, Trump declared on Twitter in 2019 he is “strongly Pro-Life, with the three exceptions – Rape, Incest and protecting the Life of the mother – the same position taken by Ronald Reagan.” He took executive actions that pleased anti-abortion advocates, including delivering the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade last year. But when he announced his comeback bid, he made no mention of the hot-button issue, concerning some conservatives.
In Florida, state Sen. Erin Grall, one of the sponsors of the bill to put in place the six-week ban, said the legislation was done in collaboration with the governor’s office. “It’s not done in a vacuum,” said Grall, although she did not go into details about her conversations.
As DeSantis is forced to engage more on national issues, he is likely to alienate voters in other ways. On the foreign policy front earlier this week, he drew blowback from traditionalist Republicans when he said the conflict in Ukraine is not a “vital” U.S. interest.
DeSantis may ultimately survive the hits, whether from progressives or fellow Republicans. He has defended his approach by pointing to his big win in November, when he beat his Democratic opponent by nearly 20 percentage points. Below the national radar, he took actions designed to win over moderates and independents, such as pushing to bolster pay for teachers or championing Everglades restoration.
Tarkanian, who like many DeSantis’ supporters views him as the party’s “best shot” of winning the White House in 2024, said DeSantis still is a candidate who appeals to “more reasonable, rational, centrist Republicans.”
She doubted the abortion ban would hurt him in the primary. Still, she said, it’s “definitely not going to help him win a general.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 16, 2023
Scott Walker grades Ron DeSantis as a potential GOP frontrunner

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As the 2024 race heats up, Walker is now weighing in on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential White House hopeful who is heralded as one of the more promising Republicans to emerge in the post-Trump era.
“I think of all the governors in America, he probably handled the best during the last four years,” said Walker.
POLITICO’s video team showed Walker some clips from DeSantis’ State of the State. Watch here to see what he had to say, including what grade he would give Desantis.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 15, 2023
Trump prepares an extensive opposition file on ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’

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“The team itself has felt like he has had a free ride without scrutiny for a number of years,” said Bryan Lanza, who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and remains close to Trump’s team. “Just because he’s aggressive and willing to fight doesn’t make him MAGA. MAGA is the policies and there is a tremendous amount of sunlight between Trump policies and DeSantis policies. The more and more that gets highlighted the more DeSantis is going to get exposed as just another member of the establishment and compared to Jeb Bush.”
The preparations are the latest sign of a bruising primary fight to come, one that could make the 2016 primary fireworks look tame in comparison. It’s a high-risk, high-reward play. The child pornography charges, for one, mirror those used by Republican Senators against then Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. And in the case of DeSantis, his contemporaries have insisted that the plea deals he signed were not unordinary.
“To make any allegation that he was soft on any kind of case, especially child pornography, is just ludicrous. It defies the logic of what I saw in the office or what my office would let happen,” Ronald Henry, a retired assistant U.S. Attorney who served as supervisor to DeSantis when he was special assistant U.S. Attorney, told POLITICO. “He wasn’t a lone wolf on his own making deals without the entire weight of the U.S. Attorney’s office overseeing what he was doing.”
Already, Trump has seen several notable defections from his camp, with former allies citing the ex-president’s “childish” antics.
“Trump was a good policy guy and I’d put him up there with Ronald Reagan on policy, but presidentially he was a disaster the way he acted, the calling people names,” said former congressman Tom Marino, who co-chaired Trump’s 2015 campaign in Pennsylvania but is now supporting DeSantis. “He’s just not a nice person…If he thinks he had trouble getting elected before, there are more and more people out there across the country who said I was for him the first time, the second time, but what’s going on and his problems I don’t think I can support him.”
Trump hasn’t waited to get started on what is expected to be a major anti-DeSantis broadside. He’s made digs at the Florida governor’s backpedaling on raising the retirement age and privatizing Social Security and Medicare, has floated unsavory questions about DeSantis’ time as a teacher in Georgia, and has considered different nicknames for the governor including “Ron Establishment” and “Tiny D,” which he told reporters he likes. For now he is settling on “Ron DeSanctimonious,” or, for short, “DeSanctus.” Trump denied he was ever considering another oft-mentioned nickname — “Meatball Ron” — and told reporters it is “too crude.”
“I’m a very loyal person,” Trump told a small group of reporters on his way to Iowa on Monday. “There’s no hostility but I think it’s a strange thing he was out of politics, he was dead…I don’t think it’s nasty. I’m a very loyal person so I don’t understand disloyalty but you do see it in politics.”
Trump even released a video on Tuesday praising past Florida governors and claiming the state was “doing fantastically” before DeSantis. “Sunshine and ocean are very alluring, it’s not too hard to work with those factors.”

Mark Kearon, a supporter of former President Donald Trump sports a hat with multiple Trump campaign buttons before he speaks at a campaign event Monday, March 13, 2023.
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Ron Johnson/AP Photo
The Trump campaign’s goal is to capitalize on the months before DeSantis announces by rolling out new attacklines on the Florida governor and painting him as the handpicked establishment favorite, not the heir apparent to the MAGA throne.
DeSantis himself has brushed off Trump’s attacks as mere noise.
A spokesperson for DeSantis declined to comment.
“DeSantis doesn’t need to promote himself,” Marino said. “He’s a leader. He doesn’t call people names. He doesn’t make fun of women. That’s an easy one. I truly meant Trump was a genius on policy and he really blew it. I told him about it. He knows it all.”
In public remarks, DeSantis has drawn a contrast with Trump without naming him by emphasizing his overwhelming win in 2022, noting that he doesn’t rely on polls — a favorite tool of Trump’s — to dictate decisions, and that his administration is leak free.
But the rivalry that has been simmering for months could start to boil over as the two men criss-cross the country, hob nob with donors in the wealthy enclaves of Palm Beach, and start to unveil key campaign support.
On Friday, DeSantis made two stops in Iowa as part of a tour for his book, “The Courage to be Free,” and visited Nevada on Saturday. Trump visited Iowa on Monday for a roundtable on education policy.
As DeSantis spoke to Iowans, Trump went after the Florida governor on Truth Social, taking aim at his “very small crowds,” his support for ending an ethanol mandate, and his votes on Social Security and Medicare.

Copies of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s book “The Courage to Be Free” are given away before he speaks at an event March 10, 2023.
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Ron Johnson/AP Photo
DeSantis did not mention 2024 during his speech in Iowa, but his decision to visit the state that holds the first contest in the Republican nominating calendar indicated he is doing more than flirting with a run. DeSantis is not expected to make a presidential announcement until Florida’s legislative session ends in May.
DeSantis’ Iowa visit came as a new aligned group, Never Back Down PAC, launched on Thursday. That group is being led by Ken Cuccinelli, one of Trump’s former administration officials. And in a potential sign of defections to come, Marino and another former Trump booster, Lou Barletta from Pennsylvania, also announced they plan to support the committee.
Some Trump allies acknowledge DeSantis has been able to attract deep-pocketed donors and some establishment Republicans who are eager to move on from the constant chaos of Trump. They say it could be challenging for him to bring together that cohort and some of the populist, right-wing voters who have been a part of the ex-president’s base in the past.
Trump’s team has tried to drive a wedge between the two by highlighting DeSantis’ voting record in Congress on support for military involvement overseas and entitlement cuts. They’re also keen to go after DeSantis’ response to Covid, although it is unclear how potent of an attack line that will be to voters who saw thousands flock to the Sunshine State during the pandemic.
But they also plan to highlight what’s described as the “personality factor.” Trump allies say the Florida governor can be awkward and mechanical in public, and note he has largely avoided the press. To contrast that, Trump’s team organized a trip to East Palestine, Ohio to bring attention to the train derailment there and interact with residents affected by the crash. They have given local and national media opportunities to ask Trump questions, and have scheduled unannounced stops in places like McDonald’s where he can interact with the public.
Trump’s team also sees an inherent advantage within their ranks. The top lieutenants for Trump’s campaign and aligned PAC, including Susie Wiles, Jason Miller, Taylor Budowich, Justin Caporale, and Tony Fabrizio, all of whom have past experience working for DeSantis.
One of Trump’s aides noted that it was a reflection of DeSantis’ high staff turnover, although Trump himself has cycled through dozens of top aides over the years, often in very messy and public ways — a fact DeSantis has referenced. Indeed, some of Trump’s top administration officials like Haley, Pence, and Pompeo, have announced a presidential run or are actively considering it.
“You look at my administration, part of the reason we’re able to do well, they’re not leaking to the media, we don’t have palace intrigue, we don’t have any drama. It’s just execution every single day, and we end up beating the left every single day for four years,” DeSantis said in Des Moines.
When asked by POLITICO at the recent CPAC gathering what that might say about his own leadership, Trump described his former cabinet officials as “ambitious” and said he was “proud” of their accomplishments working under him. “The more the merrier,” he added of them entering the campaign.
Alex Isenstadt contributed to this report from Davenport, Iowa.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 15, 2023
What’s not in Ron DeSantis’ new book

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The 250-plus page volume, like many political autobiographies, is selective with parts of his political ascent. DeSantis, who is expected to launch a bid for president in the spring, recounts door-to-door campaigning during his first bid for Congress but he doesn’t reference his decision to briefly run for U.S. Senate in 2016.
And while he notes that former President Donald Trump boosted his campaign in December 2017 when he praised him as a little-known congressman, DeSantis doesn’t include Trump’s crucial full endorsement in June 2018 that propelled DeSantis to victory in the Republican primary and ultimately to the governor’s mansion. The two men will likely be rivals for the GOP presidential nomination.
Political autobiographies are often considered routine assignments for ambitious politicians seeking higher office, a way for a White House hopeful to highlight their achievements and successes unchallenged. Even by those standards, DeSantis’ book stands out for the limited amount of personal information he gives readers, especially in the era of oversharing.
The book, however, provides DeSantis with an opportunity to tour multiple cities in Florida and as far away as California to boost book sales — and himself. The New York Times also reports that DeSantis will soon be traveling to New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada, all early primary states.
DeSantis does recount several vignettes about his life, including his time on the Yale baseball team, where he got to meet and talk to with former President George H.W. Bush, who like DeSantis was captain of the university’s baseball team. He depicts his initial meeting with his wife Casey DeSantis on a golf course and their eventual wedding at Disney World that included a scramble to get his U.S. Navy dress whites prepared ahead of the ceremony. DeSantis also discusses his wife’s 2021 breast cancer diagnosis.
DeSantis, who told Fox News’ Mark Levin last weekend that he wrote the entire book himself, also details in-depth some of his interactions and decisions, including a chapter focused on his battle with Disney over legislation that bans teachers from leading classroom lessons on gender identity or sexual orientation for students in kindergarten through third grade. DeSantis describes his conversation with then-CEO Bob Chapek, where he told the Disney executive that the outrage over the legislation would quickly pass and that he shouldn’t oppose it.
There are several passages with interactions with Trump, including when DeSantis pressed him for extra federal hurricane relief funding despite the objections of White House staff. DeSantis contends that the Trump administration was angered by his decision to publicize the decision.
But the book contains no real hints of the growing divide between the two men. He has no response to Trump’s framing of the president’s crucial endorsement, including during a recent interview with Hugh Hewitt where Trump contended that DeSantis had “begged” him for the endorsement and that he was “dead” and prepared to leave the governor’s race. “He said, ‘If you endorse me, I’ll win’ and there were tears coming down from his eyes,” asserted Trump.

During a Tuesday radio interview with Brian Kilmeade to discuss the book, DeSantis said that Trump’s attacks were part of the “silly season” that comes with campaigns. But he added that when it came to his book, “I wasn’t really into throwing potshots.”
“He can say what he wants about me,” DeSantis said. “I will also give him credit for the things that he did that were positive. I’m appreciative of a lot of things he did. It doesn’t mean I agree with everything he’s doing lately.”
Yet when DeSantis appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night, he struck a less generous tone: “He used to say how great of a governor I was. Then I win a big victory and all of a sudden, you know, he had different opinions. So you can take that for what it’s worth.”
DeSantis in several interviews promoting the book sidestepped questions about whether he wrote it to outline a potential platform for a presidential campaign, stressing that he wants it serve as a framework and “blueprint” for other states to confront what’s going on in Washington, D.C.
One of the longer sections in the book deals with DeSantis handling of the Covid-19 response, where he resisted lockdowns and vaccine mandates and pushed to open schools in the fall of 2020. DeSantis acknowledges he initially went along with some restrictions in the early days of the pandemic, but he delves into his growing skepticism at the advice being offered by federal authorities and how he began to dive into studies and reports about the virus from other countries.
DeSantis, however, does not go into the behind-the-scenes debate that occurred in his own administration over whether to impose a statewide mask mandate, a move that the governor rejected.
In his book, DeSantis lamented that the first book that he wrote in 2011, “Dreams from Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama,” “did not garner much attention, and it never hit the best seller list.”
During a promotional stop on Tuesday night in the GOP enclave of The Villages, DeSantis remarked that his new book was now topping the Amazon book sales chart.
“Just think every book that’s sold is going to annoy CNN a little bit more and a little bit more,” he quipped.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 1, 2023
Trump: I won’t call DeSantis ‘Meatball Ron’

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Trump announced his bid for a second term as president in November and has since launched multiple attacks on DeSantis, calling him “Ron DeSanctimonious” and accusing him of playing games by not formally announcing any 2024 presidential ambitions.
Earlier this month, Trump also reposted a message on social media insinuating DeSantis groomed teenage girls. DeSantis responded by saying that he doesn’t “spend my time trying to smear other Republicans.”
“I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will,” Trump wrote in Saturday’s early morning post leveling various attacks on DeSantis, “it would be totally inappropriate to use the word “meatball” as a moniker for Ron!”
Trump, who famously uses nicknames to describe his opponents, also referred to “Low Energy” Jeb Bush in his post, reprising the moniker he used to define the former Florida governor in the 2016 campaign for the Republican nomination.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 18, 2023
‘Sorry, Ron, you’re No. 2’: Sununu says he’s the top dog among conservative governors

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“I’m ranked the most fiscally conservative governor in the country,” Sununu, who is considering a 2024 presidential bid, told POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky. “I’m No. 1 in personal freedoms. Sorry, Ron, you’re No. 2,” he added, a jab at the Florida governor, considered a frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“I would challenge anyone on Second Amendment rights. We’re far and away the best, you know, because we believe in those individual freedoms. Regulatory reform, I’ll challenge any state on it,” Sununu added.
Sununu acknowledged that he may be “more moderate” on social issues. But on those issues, New Hampshire has “better results than almost anywhere else,” he said.
“I would challenge anyone on conservative credentials.”
Sununu, a New England moderate in the party of MAGA, has positioned himself as a Trump alternative who still carries the conservative mantle. And while he holds an advantage with New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status for the presidential primary calendar, it’s unclear what his path would be beyond that.
To that point, Sununu took shots at Democratic Party plans to strip New Hampshire of it’s calendar pole position, calling the move “a complete fool’s errand,” and saying the plan to bestow that status on South Carolina would open President Joe Biden up to primary attacks.
“He’s really opened … himself up for challengers,” Sununu said. “And I firmly believe there will be challengers.”
“They’re gonna have to let it play out. But there’s no doubt someone will step in and be a real challenger to Biden, because he tried to move the primary away from [New Hampshire],” Sununu said.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 9, 2023