Former President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters during an election night party at Mar-a-Lago. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
Donald Trump is a man with no chill and no poker face.
The former US president has spent the past several days making it abundantly clear to everyone who cares to listen that he is deeply, deeply worried about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis challenging him for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
In fact, to call it worry is an understatement. The guy is terrified.
DeSantis, who has been spoken of as a potential president since Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, was further boosted this week by his uniquely impressive performance in America’s midterm elections.
Republican candidates struggled across most of the country – particularly those who’d been handpicked by Trump – but in Florida, until recently considered a genuine swing state, voters re-elected DeSantis with an imposing double-digit margin.
Most conservatives saw this as a reason to celebrate and latched onto DeSantis’ win as the biggest bright spot of an otherwise disappointing night. Trump was not among them.
“Now that the election in Florida is over, and everything went quite well, shouldn’t it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 million to 4.6 million? Just asking?” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The plaintive, sulky, self-conscious energy dripping from every word! The transparent jealousy! Bitter ex-lovers mask their insecurities more effectively.
(Imagine, if you will: “Now that your first date with your new boyfriend is over, and everything went quite well, shouldn’t it be said that in 2020, I earned more money than he earned this year? Just asking?”)
Now, unlike a great many things Trump says on his ironically named platform, the vote tallies he cited here are accurate. But they lack a crucial piece of context: far, far fewer people vote in the midterms than in presidential elections.
The turnout rate in Florida on Tuesday was 49 per cent. When Trump contested the state in 2020, it was 72 per cent. DeSantis won his votes from a total pool of 7.7 million; Trump from a pool of 11 million.
That is why the Governor’s winning margin was 19.4 per cent, almost six times higher than Trump’s 3.3 per cent margin over Biden.
And it’s why American conservatives are now wondering, more vocally than ever, whether DeSantis would be a better presidential nominee.
The timing is conspicuously awkward. The day before the midterms, Trump said he would make a “very big announcement” at his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, on November 15. His plan was obvious: he intended to follow up a strong Republican performance in the midterms by taking credit for the results, and by announcing he was running for president again.
But the results were far worse than conservatives expected. So Trump’s plan for a triumphant announcement was undermined, just as DeSantis reminded everyone of his potency as a candidate.
You can understand why the former and wannabe future president is worried. But hoo boy, is he handling it badly.
A day after that aforementioned post about the vote tallies, Trump went further, lashing out at conservative-leaning media outlets for saying too many nice things about DeSantis. Or “Ron DeSanctimonious”, as Trump has taken to calling him. It’s admittedly a bit flat compared to his other schoolyard nicknames.
As you read this rant, ask yourself whether the man writing it is of calm mind.
“[They’re] all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious, an average Republican governor with great public relations, who didn’t have to close up his state, but did, unlike other Republican governors, whose overall numbers for a Republican were just average – middle of the pack – including Covid, and who has the advantage of SUNSHINE, where people from badly run states up north would go no matter who the governor was, just like I did!” Trump wrote.
“Ron came to me in desperate shape in 2017 – he was politically dead, losing in a landslide to a very good agriculture commissioner, Adam Putnam, who was loaded up with cash and great poll numbers. Ron had low approval, bad polls, and no money, but he said that if I would Endorse him, he could win.
“I didn’t know Adam so I said, ‘Let’s give it a shot, Ron.’ When I Endorsed, it was as though, to use a bad term, a nuclear weapon went off. Years later, they were the exact words that Adam Putnam used in describing Ron’s Endorsement. He said, ‘I went from having it made, with no competition, to immediately getting absolutely clobbered after your Endorsement.’
“I then got Ron by the ‘star’ of the Democrat Party, Andrew Gillum, by having two massive rallies with tens of thousands of people at each one. I also fixed his campaign, which had completely fallen apart. I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the US attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his election from being stolen.
“The fake news asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, ‘I’m only focused on the [gubernatorial] race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer.”
There was a bit more after that but you get the idea.
(I normally fix Trump’s weird capitalisations when quoting him but something about him bellowing “SUNSHINE” into the void really tickled me, as did his insistent capitalisation of “endorsement” for no apparent reason. So they got to stay in.)
Trump has a habit of falsely and often ludicrously claiming to have saved people from losing political races when he decides he no longer likes them, but it’s worth noting that in this case his version of events is rooted in at least a degree of truth.
DeSantis was initially behind Putnam in his 2018 gubernatorial primary, and the polls did show him consistently trailing Democratic nominee Andrew Gillum in the general election right up until election day. He only beat Gillum by a fraction of a percentage point.
(The bit about votes being “stolen” in Broward County is conspiratorial nonsense, though the county did make a horrendous mess of the DeSantis-Gillum election, as a subsequent audit laid out in excruciating detail. Also, Trump’s revelation that he “sent in the FBI and the US attorneys” is new, assuming it’s actually true, and has raised many eyebrows.)
The point is, Trump can credibly claim to have got DeSantis over the line. It must feel like a terrible injustice that the man he saved, or at least believes he saved, is now the biggest threat to his own ambitions.
Before the midterms, Trump had managed to keep something of a lid on whatever anxiety he was feeling while still actively trying to dissuade DeSantis from running.
“I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly,” he said on Monday, for example.
“I think he would be making a mistake. I think the base would not like it. I don’t think it would be good for the party.
“I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody, other than perhaps his wife.”
Compare those quotes to the screed above. In less than a week, he’s gone from issuing calculated threats to publishing unhinged internal monologues.
If DeSantis was ever even slightly intimidated by Trump’s bluster, he won’t be anymore. There’s nothing scary about panic.
Six people have now died in a suspected mass methanol poisoning event.