Guest Post by Alex Berenson
Hint: Not by trying to out-Trump Trump
FIRST OF TWO PARTS
Two years ago, Ron DeSantis was as much of a hero to me as any politician had ever been.
Other leaders had bent the knee to the health authoritarians who pretended Covid was the plague. Not DeSantis. He locked down late, then reopened almost immediately. He fought teachers unions and county executives to open schools and end mask mandates.
He did all this against overwhelming media pressure and without much help from fellow Republicans, including the one in the White House.
Yes, Donald Trump cut and ran when DeSantis needed him most, during Florida’s summer 2020 Covid wave:
(Spoiler alert: The intensive care units didn’t actually run out of space)
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Even then, DeSantis did not give into the pressure to lock down again.
His state handled Covid without unnecessary restrictions, an example the world should have followed. The next year, he encouraged mRNA shots early on for the elderly – a reasonable position at the time – but later blocked mRNA jab mandates.
I’m not sure DeSantis understand even now how much he meant to Team Reality members living in states which banned the unmasked or unjabbed from restaurants and libraries and public spaces.
By fall 2021, I no longer recognized New York.
It had vaccine passes and mask mandates and a crazy-eyed governor telling unvaccinated people they weren’t “listening to God and what God wants.” (Apparently God wanted New York to pay $600 million for Covid tests to one of the governor’s biggest donors, too.)
But Florida was a straight shot down I-95. I knew we could move if things got much worse. And if New York had tried to make our kids get mRNA shots, we would have.
DeSantis wasn’t exactly inspirational, but he was strong and smart and unafraid to do what he thought was right.
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That’s why the last year – and especially the last six months – have been so disappointing, as DeSantis spends more and more time on an increasingly vicious culture war.
Look, I almost respect his decision to sign the six-week abortion restrictions, too, though I disagree with it. At this point, he must know a six-week ban would be poison in a general election, which suggests he’s doing what he thinks is right.
But much of the rest of what he’s doing seems performative and stupid – and self-defeating. Disney has become his white whale. Yes, it’s an annoyingly woke company, but it also supports hundreds of thousands of people in central Florida and produces television shows and movies that kids love. Worse – from DeSantis’s point of view – the company has outfoxed him. If you have to talk about putting a state prison next to an amusement park, you’ve lost.
Meanwhile, DeSantis has encouraged book bans and supported an effort to encourage defamation lawsuits against journalists that even Florida’s Republican legislature would not support.
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I don’t know if DeSantis truly believes in these issues or just thinks he has to go after Disney to appeal to Republican primary voters and peel them away from Trump.
Either way he’s making a mistake. Going sideways at Trump by playing culture warrior won’t work.
DeSantis cannot out-Trump Trump by appealing to the sense of grievance in the Republican based that Trump channels. No one can. Trump is unique, in the worst possible way. He is at once whiny and vicious, angry and self-pitying. He’s a bully with a glass jaw. He is the basketball player who screams for ten minutes at the ref about how he’s been fouled and then as soon as he has a chance elbows the guy he’s guarding in the short-and-curlies. (Then blames his teammates for not getting him the ball.)
It is not that Trump is awful despite having good qualities. His awfulness is – amazingly – not merely his only character trait but his only virtue. He is so terrible he causes his opponents to overreact and thus reveal themselves.
A fair number of Republican voters like him for that very reason. They will never vote against him. The loudest and most committed culture warriors are in that camp. DeSantis will never peel them away.
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How can he beat Trump, then?
If the last eight years have taught Trump’s opponents anything, it should be this. The only way to deal with Trump is neither to ignore him or engage with him. It is to dismiss him – in the simplest, crudest way possible, in a way that cuts to the self-doubt at his core. Don’t threaten him with prosecution or blow up his importance by calling him a danger to American democracy, just make it clear you aren’t afraid of him and move on.
That guy’s a moron, even Tony Fauci fooled him, what an idiot, I couldn’t care less what he says about me. I’ve got a vision for this country that’s about something more than me and my whining. I’ve got a record that’s something more than complaining about 2020 forever. I’m a winner, not a loser.
Yes, Trump’s core supporters will hate DeSantis for saying Trump out, but they will never vote for DeSantis anyway. DeSantis has to peel off enough Republicans to win a primary – if such a feat is possible – without hopelessly alienating moderates for a general election. Demonizing Disney won’t get him there.
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I’m a winner.
But for that plan to work, DeSantis needs a vision – and a record.
Fortunately, he has both.
(End of Part 1. Part 2: The politician DeSantis should be channeling.)
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How DeSantis can (or can’t) win, Part 1A
Before we get to more from me, a palette cleanser – some thoughts from you
Alex Berenson
May 30, 2023
Not surprisingly, this afternoon’s Unreported Truths on Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump has generated a loud response, with lots of interesting (and some nasty) emails to me. Here are some of the most interesting, presented unedited and without editorial comment:
Hi Alex,
I am a conservative who loathes Trump and could never vote for him. He’s the guy who got famous for saying “You’re fired” on television but couldn’t fire Fauci even when he declared that “we should never shake hands again.” Fauci should have fired that day for that absurdly alarmist fear mongering.
I think DeSantis and Trump’s other opponents should simply point out that he is temperamentally unsuited to be commander in chief. He’s abrasive, erratic and most of all, ineffective.
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Too Bad. I like your no nonsense reporting and bringing us the truth. The truth here is Desantis is bankrolled by the Elites. He has sold out, plain and simple. You must have as well. Can’t think of another reason why you would support anyone but Donald Trump. Yes, he made some bonehead decisiions like letting Mike Flynn go, bad idea. But still he did some amazing things like set America on a path to prosperity because he knows how.
I am very disappointed in you. This is a sad day for America… And you know it!
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I love your work most of the time but Desantis covid response and his culture war and legislation last 6 months is why i will vote for him. I despise trump and 95% of the GOP because they are frauds. Trump isnt a culture war warrior other then bloviating. Desantis actually legislates and acts
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Fuck DeSantis. He will never get the Trump votes. We will stay home if he is the GOP nominee
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So my take on Desantis. He reminds me of Rick Perry in a way. Rick looked great. Like a movie star actually. He was a terrific Governor. Rick problem was he didn’t have the IT factor. No charismatic traits that would appeal to a wider audience. I feel that’s going to be Ron’s problem as well. JEB had a similar problem. All the money but no game. Sound bites on the news, anyone can look good but put them on a national stage and that’s when the rubber meets the road. Anyway, just my opinion for now. Also, it may not mean much but Ron has a high pitch to his voice. You don’t hear it in sound bites but in speeches it kinda comes across as effeminate.
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God I hope Desantis reads this!
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I think you have the Trump supporter wrong. The Trump supporter doesn’t dislike or even hate Desantis. They by and large like him. They think, however he can not win. And they think that DJT was robbed of an election by politicians who have lined their families pockets with Ukraine money. 2000 mules was very clear this happened.
The Trump Supporter is a small business owner getting squeezed by big Government and distrusts the DOJ in every way. Especially more so now as DJT is not there to fight for them. Clear as day he was innocent and those in power should be incarcerated after the Durham report was released.
The Trump supporter thinks the animosity between the two is a show. And that DeSantis will be his running mate…
In the now infamous words of Greta Thunderberger ‘Cow, Deer, Ewe!’
They’re all movie stars, actors. Whores.
“DeTrumpes”
TeleNovella
Canal 34 Univision
Lunes a Viernes
Let’s ignore the Trump/DeSantis kabuki theater put on by the Operation Mockingbird CIA. Neither man has the slightest chance of being sworn in as president. As 2020 showed when DJT was running away with the election in a massive landslide, the counting suddenly for no reason stopped in the middle of the night and when it resumed several hours later, every vote went the The Pedo Retard. And the theft was ignored by everyone that mattered. 81 Million votes they swore. End of problem.
When the 2024 election is blatantly stolen yet again, TPTB know nothing will come of it.
We are a banana republic until We The People decide we aren’t. Until then, don’t count on “elections”
Did this article say anything? If it did I must have missed it. Like most pre-election posturing–much ado about nothing.
Who gives a fuck I’ll never vote again
It’s a futile joke.Waiting for Armageddon.
What I would find entertaining is a possibly rigged primary going to DeSantis, with Trump then running third party a la Teddy Roosevelt.
Yes, that would mean a second term for Biden; but I, too, view voting as futile and the exploding heads among votetards would be worth watching.
Bull moose 2024
By not voting, the elections may be decided by a single tranny sodomite, but that would change absolutely nothing.
I will not give my implicit consent by dirtying my own hands with federal elections.
explicit
They assume implicit consent simply by a lack of revolution. Hell, to an extent, maybe they’re riht, but they’re never getting my EXplicit consent.
Other people, who I now call votetards, consistently give explicit consent and then think they can wash their hands of the results because, lo and behold, politicians lie when they make political promises. Sorry votetards, when you back a politician based on your votetarded belief that the politician means what he says, you get to be responsible for the RESULTS — not the promises.
“But, … but, … I was lied to. I was misled.” Nope. Once is ignorance. Twice is naivete. Twenty times is votetardation.
Alex, did you know, by that point in time DeSantis had already committed to a run in ’24? That he had met with the billionares and agreed that he would accept funding and “tamp down” the rising populism in the Republican base?
Don’t believe me, go read Sundance at the https://conservative treehouse.com
Sooo…if all politicians lie…where does that lead us? Right where you claim you want to be.
Not seeing a problem.
So Berenson is a Republican?
No. Just another grifter gatekeeper.
Just another shit show for the mental challengers.
Just saw a Desantis ad on Faux yesterday. From what I saw, he’s already working on drawing that distinguishing line, and doing a fair job of it by example.
I would not be surprised to see a “white supremacist” attack on the GOP Convention. That shit is right in the F.I.B.’s wheelhouse…lodged squarely and permanently.
They gotta do something and Trump has already proven his usefulness to them, soooo…
Just sayin.
good analysis, wrong candidate
RFK will win by attracting a broad middle swath of America with something novel – The Truth
It’s cute that you think that’s how shit really works!
RFK is the best, but they’ll never let him run….
Do you know how we know that you know nothing about him?
Like Global Warming???
All I want to try to remember about the global warming is EV’s are not ok but hybrids are. While the hybrid gets 40MPG is true, it’s the same old enchilada when comparing the battery in a hybrid with that of an EV. I asked a guy about the hybrid, I thought you guys were against electrics? We are, this is a hybrid. Cracks me up.
An ivy league navy jag lawyer who kisses small hat ass. I had hopes but any leader in America at state level or above must pass small hat muster. He signed the anti wrong think law.
“He signed the anti wrong think law.”
And made a point of doing it TWICE. What an ass(tiny)hat!
…and went to Israel to sign a law that applies, obviously, only to Florida.
Something to think about. Not sure if matters in the long run.
I was listening to CA Fitts one time and someone mentioned Desantis. She said yes, the mob doesn’t like Mr. Global…. Then they changed the subject. Interesting.
The Kennedy clan was definitely connected to the mob.
Mob versus the Globalists?
Heck,
All he has to do is out-Jeb(!) Trump.
Pretty easy.
If I was Runt DeSantis, I’d have it in the bag.
By going to Israel more often to sign laws stripping Americans of more of their rights, to better appease the semitic kleptocracy that effectively is the US government?
Yes, but who cares?
How could he win? The same way Obiden won. That’s pretty much the ONLY way.
I am curious why this Jew wants DeSantis over another Jew approved candidate.
It would make no difference if De Santis wins. He proposes MAGA like Trump but he is like Trump, NOT MAGA. Oh! me of little faith.