Rubin: Up Against a Bigger Bully, Desantis Looks Overwhelmed
DeSantis has never been tested. And it shows.
Like a boxer who has never had an adequate sparring partner, DeSantis seems utterly unprepared for the flurry of insults from Trump. DeSantis tried ignoring him and then tried halfheartedly shoving back.
But Trump, an aggressive potential opponent with a feral instinct for weakness, has consistently outplayed DeSantis. Like most Republicans, DeSantis found himself criticizing Bragg and ignoring Trump’s outrageous threats of violence.
During his governorship, DeSantis’s fights have been against politically weaker people: schoolchildren, LGBTQ youths, schoolteachers, African American historians and ex-prisoners. Even his tussle with Disney was against a corporation that couldn’t very well pick up and leave the state. One might say DeSantis is out of practice, but in fact he has never had to face off against someone of equal or greater political heft. And now, up against a bigger bully, he looks overwhelmed.
Until the past few weeks, DeSantis managed to hide at will from the media. Infamous for locking the press out, denying access to state decision-making and concealing information, he now finds himself ill-prepared for a national media that he cannot shunt aside.
When he tries to avoid journalists, he looks bumbling, weak and scripted. When he engages with friendly interviewers, he fumbles outside his comfort zone. It’s one thing to rail about the “liberal media” in the abstract or propose changing defamation law so the media cannot report on him; it’s quite another to have to face journalists on a daily basis. And if he thinks things are tough now, one can only imagine how he’ll fare if he actually announces his candidacy.
And perhaps most fatally for DeSantis, his claim to fame in battling the “socialists” and “elites” in endless culture wars doesn’t match up well against Trump, who called for his supporters to “fight like hell” before the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The guy who literally invented the MAGA movement is never going to be outplayed by DeSantis on race-baiting, xenophobia, misogyny or Christian nationalism. (As to the latter, if DeSantis thought bringing up porn star Stormy Daniels would weaken evangelicals’ embrace of Trump, he hasn’t been paying attention. They long since gave up caring about personal character.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/...-stumbles/
DeSantis has never been tested. And it shows.
Like a boxer who has never had an adequate sparring partner, DeSantis seems utterly unprepared for the flurry of insults from Trump. DeSantis tried ignoring him and then tried halfheartedly shoving back.
But Trump, an aggressive potential opponent with a feral instinct for weakness, has consistently outplayed DeSantis. Like most Republicans, DeSantis found himself criticizing Bragg and ignoring Trump’s outrageous threats of violence.
During his governorship, DeSantis’s fights have been against politically weaker people: schoolchildren, LGBTQ youths, schoolteachers, African American historians and ex-prisoners. Even his tussle with Disney was against a corporation that couldn’t very well pick up and leave the state. One might say DeSantis is out of practice, but in fact he has never had to face off against someone of equal or greater political heft. And now, up against a bigger bully, he looks overwhelmed.
Until the past few weeks, DeSantis managed to hide at will from the media. Infamous for locking the press out, denying access to state decision-making and concealing information, he now finds himself ill-prepared for a national media that he cannot shunt aside.
When he tries to avoid journalists, he looks bumbling, weak and scripted. When he engages with friendly interviewers, he fumbles outside his comfort zone. It’s one thing to rail about the “liberal media” in the abstract or propose changing defamation law so the media cannot report on him; it’s quite another to have to face journalists on a daily basis. And if he thinks things are tough now, one can only imagine how he’ll fare if he actually announces his candidacy.
And perhaps most fatally for DeSantis, his claim to fame in battling the “socialists” and “elites” in endless culture wars doesn’t match up well against Trump, who called for his supporters to “fight like hell” before the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The guy who literally invented the MAGA movement is never going to be outplayed by DeSantis on race-baiting, xenophobia, misogyny or Christian nationalism. (As to the latter, if DeSantis thought bringing up porn star Stormy Daniels would weaken evangelicals’ embrace of Trump, he hasn’t been paying attention. They long since gave up caring about personal character.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/...-stumbles/
