By Philip Bump | June 22, 2021
Key Points:
- “Nothing frustrates Trump more obviously and viscerally than coming in second. Which is not great news for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.”
- “For months, DeSantis has been the focus of speculation about the 2024 Republican nomination contest. He has been adept at navigating the politics of the coronavirus pandemic (including managing to overstate his success without much pushback) and at leveraging culture-war fights to maintain the media spotlight.”
- “At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, DeSantis was the top pick of attendees — only when Trump was excluded from the competition. Over the weekend, a straw poll conducted at the Western Conservative Summit gauging views of potential 2024 candidates again had DeSantis in the lead. This time, though, Trump was one of the trailing competitors.”
- “Trump has clearly been watching DeSantis in the rearview mirror for a while. On multiple occasions over the past few months, he has made passive-aggressive comments meant, in his unsubtle way, to diminish DeSantis’s standing. There was the time in April he suggested DeSantis would be a good running mate, a classic politician move aimed at showing dominance.”
- “It seems like it will only be a matter of time before he tries to figure out how to similarly tear down the governor of Florida.”
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Published: Jun 22, 2021 | Last Modified: Jun 29, 2021