Donald Trump wants you to know he’s not actually spending a lot of time thinking about Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis, despite the ex-president’s repeated posts on his knock-off social media site Truth Social about the state official.
The rate of Trump’s posts seems to contradict the notion he’s not worried, though. “All of the Fake News is reporting that I spend large amounts of my time coming up with a good “nickname” for Ron DeSanctimonious, who is obviously going to give the presidential “thing” a shot,” Donald ranted. “They are all 100% wrong, I don’t even think about it — A very unimportant subject to me!!!” Sure, because public figures not actually concerned with their opponents, real or imagined, post like this on social media about them. That’s obviously not actually the case, and while DeSantis hasn’t announced a presidential campaign of his own, talk continues of the right-wing governor potentially launching a bid. DeSantis seems largely unconcerned with preserving public niceties between him and Trump, instead at times bluntly shutting down the ex-president’s whiny complaints.
Now, if DeSantis were to win the presidency, it would obviously be a potentially destructive thing for the U.S., considering the governor’s record of support for abortion restrictions and limits on free speech. DeSantis has pushed measures like cutting back on how sexual orientation and gender identity can be mentioned in classrooms and restrictions on the teaching of concepts like white privilege. He has also gotten behind familiarly Republican ideas about the best way forward for electoral policy, like limits on drop boxes for absentee ballots, which are available to every voter in Florida. Going on, DeSantis also led the implementation of a Congressional district map that dramatically reshaped how the northern parts of his state were represented in the House, pushing a Black Democrat out of Congress. To pretend as though the kind of affirmative action that might provide for some districts with majorities from marginalized communities is the same thing as racism against the otherwise dominant community is just a laughably ridiculous concept.
