One of DeSantis’s greatest gifts is the ability to hide his serious intellect behind the facade of being a bumbling idiot. DeSantis is smart enough to know that if he appears to wield his serious intelligence (Yale, Harvard Law), he is finished as a MAGA. He wouldn’t be as “real.” It makes DeSantis especially dangerous. He is smart enough to know that Trump is an utter moron and isn’t afraid to talk about it. He is also smart enough to be all-MAGA and all-effective, unlike Trump.
From Vanity Fair:
While DeSantis and the former president are already locked in a 2024 cold war, the smackdown has been unfolding off camera. According to a former DeSantis congressional staffer, DeSantis trashes Trump in private.
“He calls him a TV personality and a moron who has no business running for president,” the former staffer said. DeSantis tells donors that, if he takes on Trump, he would launch a full frontal attack on his record and competence, according to a GOP source briefed on the conversations. “DeSantis says the only way to beat Trump is to attack him head-on.”
Trump, meanwhile, vents about DeSantis constantly, according to people who speak with him. Trump’s animus is fueled by his belief that he put DeSantis in the governor’s mansion.
Sounds just like the crime boss that Trump is. “I put you in office, you owe me loyalty.” Trump “helped” the DeSantis campaign. DeSantis also knows that he is strong enough on his own now that he doesn’t need to come to Trump on bended knee. It doesn’t matter that Trump started DeSantis’s career. DeSantis earned the stature he has now.
One thing about DeSantis, of which we should all be wary. It is universally known that DeSantis has virtually no friends, and he treats his staff like slaves and very disrespectfully. DeSantis functions politically as he does in life. He and his wife form a two-person team (He does love his wife), and both have the same drive to power. So, anytime something is sourced to a DeSantis staffer, it’s best to be a little suspect. It could be someone trying to get back at him. But this sounds all too real.
Last, it shouldn’t comfort anyone that DeSantis could take Trump out if the two were to go head to head. (Trump may not run, some think it’s less than 50-50 that Trump runs. In such a scenario, the nomination virtually falls in DeSantis’s lap because DeSantis is as MAGA as Trump but with the intellect to get the agenda accomplished. Outside of a major non-partisan disaster, a CAT-5 hurricane, or a major earthquake, the type of disasters that DeSantis’s competence would help, he is just as big a threat as Trump. If not bigger.
@JasonMiciak believes a day without learning is a day not lived. He is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is a Canadian-born dual citizen who spent his teen and college years in the Pacific Northwest and has since lived in seven states. He now enjoys life as a single dad of a young girl, writing from the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He loves crafting his flower pots, cooking, and currently studies philosophy of science, religion, and non-math principles behind quantum mechanics and cosmology. Please feel free to contact for speaking engagements or any concerns.