AG Report 5.31.2023

My Take on the 2024 Republican Primary:

It’s only been one week since Ron DeSantis announced his bid for president — and Donald Trump obviously still has a big lead in the polls for now — but the energy shift I’ve seen since the announcement is significant.

Prior to the announcement, many top Trump influencers were riding high from the polls and months of one-sided attacks, while DeSantis supporters were legitimately anxious about Trump’s lead. Now there’s been a complete swing. DeSantis supporters are excited, while Trump's top advocates are demoralized and angry, having one meltdown after another on social media. This is mostly reflective of the most engaged supporters, but it’s the type of enthusiasm that fuels campaign momentum. This was also validated by DeSantis raising $8.2 million in campaign donations over his first 24 hours.  

A big part of that is DeSantis supporters finally have someone to rally around. His campaign came out firing, brandishing receipts about Trump’s record and failures as president. Trump hadn’t faced substantive criticism from legitimate Republican opponents in a long time. Now, he’s watching DeSantis do one interview after another on right-leaning platforms, and speaking at 12 events across Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina in just a few days.

DeSantis is conducting a real campaign. Meanwhile, Trump is nowhere to be found outside of weird rants on Truth Social and a few video releases. Even his hourly attacks on DeSantis, such as suggesting that Andrew Cuomo handled Covid-19 better than DeSantis, are coming off as desperate and contrary to most of what his own supporters believe. His last real event (outside of the CNN town hall) was a rally in New Hampshire in April, and his next rumored event isn’t until the Hannity town hall in June. That means Trump didn’t have a single serious event with supporters in May. He was seen at the Saudi-funded LIV golf tournament, but a video of him answering a question about the debates made him look tired and old.

This further validates my belief that a big reason Trump was trying so hard to prevent DeSantis from running is that he’s no longer capable of conducting an intensive campaign and was only interested in facing competitive opponents that shared his senior citizen status. 

The numbers may not fully reflect it yet, but the energy surrounding DeSantis’s first week makes it clear that this became a real primary race last week.

Draining the Swamp (Again):

A central tenet of Trump’s message to voters is that he needs to be elected again so he can clean up the swamp. DeSantis will obviously counter by pointing to Trump’s failure to do that during his first term. Trump’s decisions on his way out are a great example of that.

After a bunch of his supporters ruined their lives based on falsehoods he promoted prior to January 6th, Trump did nothing to help them on his final days in office. Instead, he issued a wave of pardons for donors, corrupt politicians, rappers, a friend of Jared Kushner, and even one for Stephen Bannon, who was caught scamming Trump supporters by raising money to allegedly build a border wall and then laundering much of it for personal use.

It further proves that scamming Trump supporters isn’t something that particularly bothers Donald Trump. 

On Covid-19 response:

Trump has spent the last few weeks arguing that not only was DeSantis’ response on Covid not as good as advertised but that it was actually worse than that of disgraced former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo. This claim is based on Florida having the 3^rd most Covid deaths while also coincidentally being the 3^rd largest state (NY is 4^th in population and 4^th in Covid deaths… must be a coincidence!). This claim is obviously dishonest and depends on the ignorance of the audience. Florida actually did better than New York when it came to per capita deaths, especially when adjusted by age. Cuomo himself celebrated the false attack. But there is a larger and more important point here:

The right has been mostly united in agreement that Cuomo did a terrible job managing Covid-19 and DeSantis was a model example of how many aspects of the Covid response should have been handled. Trump is now undermining that consensus just to try to score some cheap primary points against DeSantis. The reason for the right’s consensus is that many felt the federal government and politicians like Cuomo were so focused on preventing Covid-19 deaths that they often imposed ludicrous and extremely harmful restrictions without accounting for the costs of those policies. So while New York was putting locks on playgrounds and sending state agents to ensure Jewish schools remained closed, Florida was pushing to reopen schools and allow kids to interact.  While New York was shutting down businesses and ruining lives based on questionable mandates, Florida allowed people to personally choose what precautions they took. So not only did Florida do slightly better on Covid deaths, but they also managed to provide their residents with a level of freedom and economic independence that was completely taken away in places like New York. That’s why so many New York residents spent much of Covid-19 in Florida and why former New York resident, Donald Trump, moved to Florida after his Presidency was over.

While Trump mostly stayed out of those debates personally, with the exception of occasionally attacking Republican Governors for reopening after he got some criticism from the press, he did hand over his administration’s response to bureaucrats that clearly sided with the Cuomo approach when formulating their recommended policies related to Covid-19. By now suggesting that Cuomo did better than DeSantis, Trump reinforces the conclusion that he learned nothing from those events and would again endorse lockdowns and other restrictions without any consideration for the costs to regular Americans.

Trust the Experts/Science

Many people no longer pay attention to claims or scientific interpretations from experts because of the bias in their analysis. A perfect example is this San Francisco Chronicle article, which cites “experts” (= advocates) to claim “the science” does not support the widespread belief that transgender women are faster and stronger than biological women….