Trump's anti-DeSantis talking points
The pot calls the kettle black
According to Mike Allen and Josh Kraushaar of Axios, Donald Trump plans to employ five lines of attack on Ron DeSantis if, as expected, the Florida governor runs for president. Here are the five:
DeSantis' past support for changes to Social Security and Medicare, including votes as a U.S. congressman to raise the eligibility age for Medicare.
Disloyalty to Trump after he helped DeSantis get elected governor in 2018. Trump also plans to pound DeSantis on likability.
Trump wants to cast DeSantis as a lackey of former House Speaker Paul Ryan. On Trump's social-media site, Truth Social, he attacked Ryan this week as a loser who "couldn't get elected dogcatcher," and said he should resign or be fired as a Fox Corp. board member.
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.
These lines of attack have all the consistency and honesty we have come to expect from Donald Trump. In other words, next to none.
I discussed Trump’s attack on DeSantis for supporting (needed) changes to Social Security and Medicare here. I noted:
Earlier [this] century when Trump first contemplated running for president, he proposed changes to the retirement system just like Paul Ryan’s. In fact, he went one big step further by arguing that the retirement age should be raised to 70. . . .
As a candidate for president in 2016, Trump abandoned his positions on Social Security and Medicare reform. But apparently he didn’t become a complete “hands off” guy. According to the Washington Post, each of his White House budget proposals included cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs.
It’s just like Trump to attack an opponent for having once taken a position that, it turns out, Trump also once took.
Trump’s second line of attack, disloyalty, is ridiculous. There’s no unwritten rule or sensible moral principle that if a politician endorses a candidate for office, that candidate is forever barred from opposing his endorser in a future election. If there were such a rule, an aging politician could preempt opposition from an up-and-coming one for the rest of his career simply by providing an endorsement. That’s not the way it works, nor should it be.
If DeSantis believes he is better suited for the presidency than Trump, he has the right, and arguably the duty, to run against Trump. If DeSantis believes Trump, having led the GOP to multiple defeats, should no longer lead the party, he has the right, and arguably the duty, not to support him for president.
Next, Trump reportedly will try to cast DeSantis as a lackey of former House Speaker Paul Ryan. It’s true that after DeSantis, then age 34, was elected to Congress in 2012, he allied himself closely with Ryan. At that time, Ryan was a Tea Party hero, a leading critic of Obamacare, and, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, probably the Republican politician with the most knowledge about how to rein in federal spending.
It was natural, and not at all blameworthy, for DeSantis to gravitate towards Ryan.
What about the young Donald Trump? At age 34, Donald Trump was doing nothing to advance the cause of conservatism. In fact, he wasn’t even a conservative.
Indeed, in 2004, when he was in his late 50s, Trump told Wolf Blitzer, “In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat." What deep thought made him more of a Democrat? “It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.”
By 2015, Trump was nearly 70. In July of that year, he said, “I identify with some things as a Democrat.”
Paul Ryan is no longer a considered a conservative hero. But he’s a conservative and has been since he entered public life. If it comes down to the past leanings of the two candidates, I prefer a Republican who, in his early 30s, was a fan of a conservative leader to a Johnny-come-lately Republican who, in his late 50s, identified more as Democrat than a Republican.
Trump’s fourth line of attack is to rip DeSantis for his response to Covid. Because DeSantis made his name in part for mostly resisting policies that restricted freedom in the name of fighting the virus, Trump has an uphill battle here. Thus, according to the Axios article, the former president “plans to attack DeSantis' caution in the earliest days of the pandemic — and try to fight the issue to a draw.” (Emphasis added)
But Trump doesn’t deserve a draw. As I said here:
Trump largely turned federal Covid policy over to the reviled Dr. Fauci. He supported lockdowns early on. DeSantis was critical of lockdowns and reopened Florida fairly quickly compared to most other jurisdictions.
Finally, let’s turn to DeSantis’ comments on whether to maintain financial and military support for Ukraine. Trump reportedly plans to attack them as wishy-washy, and to push “the MAGA line of cutting aid” to Ukraine.
DeSantis’ comments were unimpressive — a collection of catch phrases like no “blank check” and no “proxy war.” He may have to do better — in one direction or the other — when he campaigns and debates.
However, as a candidate for the presidency in 2016, Trump said he liked to keep our adversaries guessing about what he would and would not do as president. So again, Trump’s insistence that DeSantis describe his thinking on the Russia-Ukraine conflict in anything more than generalities smacks of hypocrisy.
For years now, Republicans have let Trump get away with the lack of consistency and intellectual honesty he displays with these five anti-DeSantis talking points. Will things be different this time, now that Trump has what seems like a formidable Republican opponent?
Trump is betting they won’t be. Unfortunately, he might be right.
Re: Ukraine. As a matter of its own interests, America can ill afford to pass up a chance to weaken one of its main rivals in the world. It can do so without any involvement by its own troops, with the advantage of opposing what almost everyone understands to be numerous Russian' war crimes; with a (for once mostly) united Europe behind it, and facing the prospect that a Russian victory -- likely without our aid -- will embolden it, making its future adventures more risky and costly to oppose.
DeSantis is an establishment shill and that's why you support him. He passed on CPAC and went to the Club for Growth, instead. and yes, he is beholden to Paul Ryan and the rest of the establishment and their money men. That's undeniable. And what else is undeniable is the fact he has a super-majority in both Houses in the FL legislature. He sees absolutely no opposition that's meaningful.
He makes a lot of meaningless gestures knowing the GOPe and their punditry will praise him to the heavens while misrepresenting Trump, at every turn. Take the Southern invasion for example. DeSantis sends his people to Texas to recruit illegals, flies them to FL and then ships them North. But he's done nothing to stop the flow of the Southern invasion. He's done nothing when Biden flies in thousands of illegals into FL, in the dead of night. He's done nothing to stop Biden bussing in thousands of illegals. And he's done nothing to stop illegals from crossing over from adjoining American states.
Now, let's talk about backstabber Ryan, that you like so much. The GOPe pulled every dirty trick they could think of to prevent Trump from winning the nomination. PLb promoted everyone of them. And after Trump won the nomination, the GOPe doubled down in their opposition and supported Hillary. There's nothing conservative about that. As a October surprise, Ryan leaked a conference call he held with the GOPe. On the tape, he said he would never support or defend Trump. The GOPe has adhered to that ever since. The GOPe supported the four year coup, the two impeachments, and the two Stalinist show trials. In 2020, they supported Brain-dead Biden over President trump. They knew our elections are being rigged and they know J6 was a false flag riot. The GOPe hate Trump and the America first movement more than they love our Country. They're willing to destroy it all if they can take down President Trump. Now it's the GOPe's turn for the presidency. Once they get rid of Trump, they will install their globalist puppet into the Oval Office. That won't benefit America, one iota. The GOPe collaborated in the destruction of our Country. We will never forget or forgive.