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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   34071 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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While a cold war had been brewing between Desantis and Trump for months, Trump just initiated open hostilities in a series of tweets on Truth Social:

Now that midterms are over, and a success… NewsCorp, which is Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and the no longer great New York Post (bring back Col!), is 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! 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 him,…

…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 (who was later revealed to be a “Crack Head”), 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 U.S. 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…

…And now, Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, “I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.” Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer… This is just like 2015 and 2016, a Media Assault (Collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive. The Wall Street Journal loved…

…Low Energy Jeb Bush, and a succession of other people as they rapidly disappeared from sight, finally falling in line with me after I easily knocked them out, one by one. We’re in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win. Put America First and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Trump clearly wants no primary challenges for the 2024 election, which is why he's gone out of his way to ensure some R hopefuls wouldn't start campaigns if he was in. Desantis, however, pointedly refused to rule out a 2024 campaign of his own, much to Trump's annoyance. As of the time of writing, Desantis currently has almost 2x the chance to become the next president on Election Betting Odds as Trump (29% vs 17.8%), and the midterm elections helped Desantis and hurt Trump. Anecdotally, I've seen a bit of movement towards Desantis on usual Trump strongholds like 4chan, with some saying Desantis is like Trump but "he actually does the stuff he says instead of just tweeting about it", although it's hard to get a representative sample on an anonymous image board for obvious reasons.

Reposting what I said in the election thread. He's also swinging at Youngkin:

Young Kin (now that's an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn't it?) in Virginia couldn't have won without me. I Endorsed him, did a very big Trump Rally for him telephonically, got MAGA to Vote for him - or he couldn't have come close to winning. But he knows that, and admits it. Besides, having a hard time with the Dems in Virginia - But he'll get it done!

My estimation is that Trump or his advisors sense that there are a lot of people in the GOP who are primed to blame him for spoiling what they feel should have been a blowout and wants to signal that he's prepared to sabotage the party if they try to get rid of him.

Yeah, Trump seems like exactly the type of person to pull a Teddy Roosevelt if he loses the R nomination. The two most obvious outcomes at this point for Republicans are either 1) they nominate him and probably lose again in 2024, or 2) they don't nominate him and Trump does everything in his power to lash out at those who he thinks "betrayed" him, which could also plausibly cause a loss in 2024. A better outcome for Republicans would be if Trump just drops dead due to old age so the next generation could take over without Trump trying to burn the house down.

Or publicly pitch a fit about his ongoing legal drama(how is that going, BTW?) in a way that doesn’t prevent him from getting a felony conviction like the democrats want to deliver for their base?

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