Trump, evidently emboldened by a single poll finally showing him ahead and embiggened by decades of shoving overcooked burgers into his glowing orange gob,
is planning on attacking DeSantis even harder than he's already a has-been. Whoops, I meant "than he already has been".
That last line is something we've all discussed before: people who used to be classic conservatives now going half- to full-crazy to pick up the Trump voters, who do not elect sane people. DeSantis does seem to have more success straddling the line than most, which is probably why he's a threat to Trump.
That list of five is some hypocritical bullshit.
1) Trump also proposed cutting Medicare and Social Security. In fact, he ran on the campaign pledge to cut
everything. He lied, but he said it.
2) Obviously Trump only values loyalty to Trump, but likability is something DeSantis can hit back with. It won't take much effort to show the remaining classic conservatives TRUMP ANGRILY RANTS ABOUT EVERYTHING and grabs women by the pussy. Yeah, Trump admitted that was him, remember?
3) The biggest self-own since tehdang said Trump's FBI censored Twitter is Trump saying someone else couldn't get a win
on Truth Social. The fact that he lost the popular vote, twice, and lost the 2020 election so hard he lost the 2022 election, isn't helping. DeSantis might not go with "Trump said he won in 2020 and lied" because he's planning ahead, but it would be trivial for DeSantis-supporting donors to run ads that say this.
4) Trump has zero authority to criticize anyone's response to COVID. Whatever damage Trump says DeSantis caused to Florida, DeSantis can say Trump did to the USA.
5) It'll be interesting when DeSantis throws that "Russia isn't in Ukraine" bit back in Trump's face. If Trump was suggesting Putin wouldn't go into Ukraine only because he was there, then Trump was suggesting Putin going into Ukraine was bad. DeSantis might not go that route, but again, it would be trivial for ads to show Trump as a Russian stooge, fighting even now to give Putin whatever he wants so the pee pee tapes don't come out.
DeSantis might sleep on any/all of this because, well,
he's not running. But Trump picking these battle lines to draw against the governor of his own state while he's being sued by (checks notes)
everyone, it just doesn't seem sure that he'll get good results.
Which means the two of them will be tearing into each other for months to come.
Good.