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Trump has a 5-point 'attack plan' to paint Ron DeSantis as not nearly weird or extreme enough [1]
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Date: 2023-03-03
Sure, it could work. As in, it remains logically possible. Stranger things have happened. Much stranger. But that doesn’t mean Trump will take it lying down—because the only thing Trump takes lying down is an Adderall and two sleeves of Double Stuf Oreos during his regularly scheduled midafternoon blood sugar crashes.
According to a new report from Axios, Trump is now “convinced his attacks on Ron DeSantis are chipping away at the Florida governor's support and confidence.” Per Axios’ sources, Trump thinks DeSantis is the only candidate who can go toe to toe with him over the course of a primary campaign, and he wants to either scare DeSantis away from declaring his candidacy or damage him enough to eventually upend his run. And since Trump can no longer blackmail foreign leaders into opening bullshit investigations into his biggest rivals, he has the long knives out and is running around the yard with them like a toddler with a pair of grown-up scissors.
According to Axios, Trump plans to attack DeSantis on five main points. The first is DeSantis’ record of supporting changes to Medicare and Social Security. The second is “disloyalty to Trump”—which is the original MAGA sin, and apparently punishable by hanging. The third involves portraying DeSantis as a dedicated acolyte of former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan. But it’s items 4 and 5 that will really plunge these two into an abyss of unreason:
DeSantis' response to COVID is a top Trump target, even though the governor is known for resisting mask mandates. Trump plans to attack DeSantis' caution in the earliest days of the pandemic — and try to fight the issue to a draw. A March 2020 headline in the Tampa Bay Times said: "DeSantis orders major shutdown of beaches, businesses in Broward, Palm Beach." (DeSantis pushes back on this.) DeSantis took heat for muddled comments, in a Fox News interview last week, about whether to maintain financial and military support for Ukraine. Trump plans to portray DeSantis as wishy-washy on the war, while he toes the MAGA line of cutting aid.
So the GOP primary fight will be over who tried to kill the most people with COVID and who’s most likely to betray our democratic allies in order to curry favor with a murderous dictator? Okay, sure. Good luck in the general, guys!
Unfortunately for DeSantis, Trump’s greatest appeal to the MAGA crowd has always been that he doesn’t sound like a typical politician. Those of us with IQs higher than Trump’s glove size know that’s because he never had the faintest clue what he was talking about, but DeSantis’ challenge will be selling himself as a reduced-calorie double bacon cheeseburger to a crowd that’s eaten nothing but red meat for the past seven years.
“There’s a pre-Trump Ron and there’s a post-Trump Ron,” one Trump insider told Axios. “He used to be a Reagan Republican. That’s where he comes from. He’s now awkwardly trying to square his views up with the populist nationalist feeling of that party.”
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/3/2156027/-Trump-has-a-5-point-attack-plan-to-paint-DeSantis-as-not-nearly-weird-or-extreme-enough
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