![](https://i0.wp.com/www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DeSantis-and-Trump-2.jpg?fit=789%2C460&ssl=1)
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DeSantis-and-Trump-2.jpg?fit=789%2C460&ssl=1)
The Florida governor doesn’t look like he’s going to pull his punches, which should make for the biggest test yet of Trump’s appeal to Republican voters.
F lorida governor Ron DeSantis’s 2024 presidential campaign had been off to a rocky start even before launch day. DeSantis backers who hoped to see the embryonic campaign right itself were discouraged by its formal kickoff on Twitter, which struggled with technological hiccups and seemed designed to appeal to the narrow “very online” faction of the Right rather than average voters. We can safely assume that the DeSantis campaign recognized these early mistakes, because it has corrected for them.
In the days since, the candidate has dropped the emphasis on Bitcoin and the “woke mind virus.” He has replaced those messages with one that stresses something closer to DeSantis’s core strength: Not just his fealty to conservative ideological goals but his managerial acumen in their pursuit. It’s a pitch that has allowed him to take direct aim at Donald Trump.
In an interview with Ben Shapiro last week, DeSantis unloaded on the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. He accused Trump of attacking him “by moving left,” and said Trump was “a different guy” than the one who ran for the White House in 2016. He attacked Trump for supporting a pathway to citizenship for some non-citizens, signing a criminal-justice-reform bill and “bloated” omnibus spending bills, and “turning the reins over” to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the height of the pandemic. He hit back at Trump’s efforts to rewrite the history of the pandemic — including the suggestion that New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s policies had been preferable to Florida’s. He called Trump’s conduct “bizarre,” and he argued that Trump’s refusal to recognize his own mistakes suggests he would make them all over again if he were entrusted with the White House once more.
The DeSantis team isn’t shying away from deploying the same kind of unrestrained rhetorical assault on Donald Trump and his defenders that they themselves so often use against opponents. When a Trump campaign operative claimed that DeSantis’s history of seeking elected office was evidence that he’s “someone who’s in it for himself” rather than the country, the DeSantis team’s rapid-response shop fired back with evidence of their candidate’s military record.
In response, a reliable Trump surrogate published images of Representative Dan Crenshaw, former representative Adam Kinzinger, and the late senator John McCain. A less self-assured campaign devoted to overthinking the race might have been caught flatfooted by the in-group goading here. This was a not-so-subtle brushback pitch designed to scare the DeSantis campaign out of defending Republicans in uniform because some such Republicans had broken with Donald Trump at various points in their careers. But the DeSantis campaign is not such a soft operation. “Team Trump: Being in the military doesn’t mean s**t. Happy Memorial Day.” the DeSantis rapid-response account replied.
“Everyone knows if I’m the nominee, I will beat Biden, and I will serve two terms,” DeSantis pointedly told Fox News Channel viewers this weekend. He argued that if he is elected, there will be “no more excuses about why we couldn’t get it done.” And he made a forceful effort to turn what is seen by many as a glaring liability — his ongoing dispute with the Walt Disney Company — into a strength. “He’s taken the side of Disney in our fight down here in Florida,” DeSantis said of Trump. “I’m standing for parents. I’m standing for children, and I think a multi-billion dollar company that sexualizes children is not consistent with the values of Florida or the values of a place like Iowa.”
This barrage of criticism capped off a weekend of brutal fisticuffs, and it forced Donald Trump into a position his supporters rarely see from the former president: a defensive crouch.
Retreating to his alternative social-media fiefdom, Truth Social, Trump responded to DeSantis’s accusations of mixed loyalties when it comes to Disney. “Ron DeSanctimonious just stated, without correction on Fox & Friends, that I was ‘backing’ Disney,” the former president fumed. “Wrong! Fox should have read my posted TRUTH on Disney, but that’s not the game they play.”
Trump went on to protest the suggestion that his campaign’s conciliatory messages toward the children’s entertainment company suggest that he doesn’t have the stomach for the fight DeSantis picked. “This all happened during the Governorship of ‘Rob’ DeSanctimonious,” read the former president’s inscrutable attack on the governor’s record of somehow presiding over Disney’s leftward drift. “Instead of complaining now, for publicity reasons only, he should have stopped it long ago.”
These early skirmishes are promising. The DeSantis campaign has shown a willingness to ignore those who argue that it should be as hostile toward Republicans who don’t toe the Trump line as Trump is, a strategy that would entail abandoning a readymade contrast between the two candidates. It has instead attacked its primary rival in no uncertain terms, and on terrain that is less than favorable for Trump. And it has put Trump on the defensive on the Disney issue, which looked not long ago like it might be a weakness for DeSantis. This is evidence of a fleetfooted campaign that can learn from its mistakes.
Whether the DeSantis campaign can sustain this fusillade remains to be seen. But the early signs suggest that the Florida governor isn’t going to pull his punches, which should make for the biggest test yet of Trump’s appeal to Republican voters.