The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, will announce today his candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections in what is already an all-out political war against Donald Trump within a Republican Party that has taken to the bush. He will do it neither more nor less than in a live Twitter with Elon Musk at 7:00 p.m. on the East Coast, a time of wide audiences throughout the country.
That DeSantis has become a threat to the former president was already clear on Monday, when Trump took advantage of Senator Tim Scott’s launch of the primary race to attack him: “Good luck to Scott. It represents a big step forward compared to Ron DeSanctimonious, who is totally ineligible,” Trump said, rescuing the nickname he coined a few months ago to highlight the sanctimonious side of the Florida governor ( sanctimonious is the synonym in English for meapilas or prudish).
The invocation of the alleged ineligibility of Ron DeSantis was not only an enormous irony coming from a politician civilly convicted of sexual assault (to the writer Jean Carroll), charged with bribery (to the porn actress Stormy Daniels) and investigated for obstruction of justice by hiding secret papers, as well as by instigating a coup attempt through the assault on the Capitol on 6-E of 2021 or by trying to falsify the presidential elections in Georgia; Trump’s allusion could be read as a reiteration of the threat he made against DeSantis last fall, when he directly threatened to clean up dirt on him.
“If (DeSantis) shows up, I’ll tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anyone else apart from, perhaps, his wife … who is actually running his campaign, â€the former president warned his competitor. “If he runs, he could get really hurt. He would only damage and divide the party, lose the massive and precious MAGA (Make America Great Again) vote and would never be able to successfully run for governor again,†he warned.
In recent weeks, the Trump campaign has focused on mocking ads accusing DeSantis of having approved big tax increases in his state and intending to do the same in the country if he becomes president.
DeSantis, for his part, insists that he call him whatever Trump calls him, he is “a winner.” And last March he gave her a taunt over the Daniels case: “I don’t know what it means to pay money to a porn star to ensure her silence about some kind of alleged affair,” he released.
But, paradoxes of populism, the truth is that Trump gained the upper hand over DeSantis after his indictment in the Daniels affair. Today the difference is, according to polls last week, 36 points in favor of the leader (56% to 20% in voting intention among Republicans). And the governor’s insistence on legislating against any advance on rights such as abortion, gender identity, or the fight against racism, as well as his war on Disney executives for criticizing his many prohibitionist laws, do not seem to help him with the more moderate voters.
The 44-year-old lawyer and ex-soldier, who in November renewed his position as head of Florida with 60% of the votes, exhibited his extremism again last Monday when, at a meeting of religious communicators, he defended the idea of ​​reinforcing the conservative majority of the Supreme Court. DeSantis specifically indicated that the new US president could, over two terms, replace the retiring magistrates John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor. And since the first is right-wing but the second is considered progressive, the current 6-3 majority in favor of conservatives could be expanded to 7-2. And, thus, the court already modeled by Trump in his second term with the stated intent to strike down abortion rights – as indeed the justices agreed last year – would remain conservative “for a quarter of a century,†he said. without cutting
