On Tuesday, a conservative journalist came forward and revealed that he called Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, currently running for the GOP presidential nomination, a “p***y” to his face for not addressing the attacks former President Donald Trump launched against him. There’s no doubt in my mind that DeSantis thought he was taking the moral high road by not getting down in the mud with Trump, but that’s not how people in our modern culture view politics anymore. When they see someone not address attacks made against them, they do not see any sort of nobleness in it. It looks like weakness.
It looks like someone who won’t fight back, which means the American people won’t be able to count on that person to fight for them when the assaults from the left ramp up. Thus, DeSantis doesn’t look stately for ignoring the attacks from Trump, but cowardly.
There’s also the possibility that DeSantis was attempting to preserve some good will with Trump in case he loses the primary so that he can potentially be his vice presidential running mate.
Here’s more from the Daily Caller:
Ryan Girdusky, a conservative journalist and activist, wrote in the Spectator about his experience with the DeSantis campaign when he was invited to Florida for a May 2023 event with other conservative “influencers.” Girdusky detailed his frustrations with the campaign structure and wrote that after being given an opportunity to offer DeSantis advice, the conservative journalist told the now-presidential candidate that he needed to start attacking Trump.
“You need to attack Trump,” Girdusky claims he said to DeSantis.
“You want me to attack Trump now?” DeSantis responded, according to Girdusky’s account.
“‘Yes, do you want my phone? You can tweet from my phone.’ I replied. Everyone laughed, but I was half serious,” Girdusky wrote.
“Trump had been attacking him for half a year, and I said, ‘The first time you ignore it, you seem honorable; the fiftieth time, you look like a p*ssy,'” Girdusky recounted.
“I sank in my chair and thought, ‘I said ‘p*ssy’ in front of Casey DeSantis, my parents would be so embarrassed,’” the Spectator piece states.
The conservative-leaning reporter then says that he wasn’t a big fan of the campaign’s strategy to announce DeSantis’ candidacy on social media. He then provided details about his invitation to be on a call with other folks labeled “influencers” in June to talk about what the Florida Republican might do to improve his campaign.
“After an hour of pacing and my anger growing, I went off. My voice even cracked at one point,” Girdusky stated in the article. “I said that the advance team was an embarrassment and should be fired, the messaging was all wrong, that doubling down to try to sound like an Evangelical when he was not an Evangelical would not work and his interview on the Christian show was embarrassing.”
The former campaign manager for DeSantis, Generra Peck, allegedly pushed back during the call.
“This is why the super PAC has nothing to work with, and they say it, you’re not discussing the issues. This is Ted Cruz 2.0,” Girdusky says he stated in response.
In the last poll ahead of the Iowa caucus, DeSantis fell to third place, trailing both Trump and former United Nations Nikki Haley. Despite the grim outlook, DeSantis managed to take second, two points ahead of Haley and 30 points behind Trump.
After half an hour, several media outlets, including the Associated Press and CNN, called the election for Trump. The early call, while some Iowans still were waiting to cast their vote, came under fire from the DeSantis campaign.
I don’t know if there’s anything that DeSantis can do at this point to catch up with Trump, particularly in the eyes of the American people. Folks seem to have already made up their minds who they are supporting for the nomination. We’ll just have to wait and see. This is only the beginning.
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