MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting the campaign of former president Donald Trump, has made clear in a series of ads that it views Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s past views on entitlement reform as a weakness heading into 2024. But Trump is equally vulnerable to that line of attack.
Trump’s 2020 budget proposal included cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. The proposal outlined an aim to spend $25 billion less on Social Security in the next decade and $845 billion less on Medicare over that same period of time. The proposal also would have allocated $1.2 trillion in a block-grant program to states for Medicaid, in an effort to spend $1.5 trillion less on that program over ten years.
Never Back Down, a pro-DeSantis PAC, debuted its own 30-second ad taking Trump to task for fighting fellow Republicans. The ad, “Fight Democrats, Not Republicans,” unearths Trump’s own comments on the issue of entitlements.
The ad, which is the group’s first TV spot, depicts DeSantis saying, “We’re not going to mess with Social Security,” while Trump previously told a reporter that “at some point” entitlements will be something to “look at.”
The Never Back Down ad came after MAGA Inc. launched a rather unique ad last week: a 30-second video of a man eating chocolate pudding with his fingers. The ad plays on a Daily Beast report from last month that claimed DeSantis once ate a pudding cup with three fingers in lieu of a spoon while traveling on a private plane in 2019.
But while the ad grabs viewers with its uncomfortable imagery, the spot ultimately does not concern DeSantis’s eating habits but rather is just the latest example of Trump’s team hitting DeSantis on entitlements.
“Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don’t belong. And we’re not just talking about pudding,” a voice-over says. “DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements, like cutting Medicare, slashing Social Security, and even raising our retirement age.”
“Tell Ron DeSantis to keep his pudding fingers off our money,” the video adds. “Oh, and get this man a spoon!”
DeSantis voted for three nonbinding resolutions between 2013 and 2015 that called for raising the retirement age to 70 and reducing benefits for millions of earners. Trump’s attacks on DeSantis’s entitlement record resemble those leveled by Adam Putnam during the 2018 Florida gubernatorial primary — attacks that left-leaning Politifact classified as misleading given that DeSantis voted for non-binding budget resolutions that, even if adopted, would not have changed federal law and would not have therefore cut benefits for any Americans.
The governor also seemed to walk back his previous support for raising the retirement age as well as privatizing Social Security back in March. “We’re not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans,” he told Fox News. “I think that that’s pretty clear.”
The “Pudding Fingers” ad follows a 30-second ad that MAGA Inc. debuted late last month also attacking DeSantis’s record on entitlements.
Nonetheless, the pudding ad got people talking.
In a Sunday memo, the Trump PAC cited search-engine rankings as evidence the ad was a smash hit:
By Friday evening, the No. 1 search suggestion in Google for ‘Ron DeSantis’ was ‘pudding.’ As of Sunday afternoon, MAGA, Inc.’s tweet of the ad had reached 4.2 million people. Media outlets across the political spectrum have covered the ad, including: Bloomberg, Breitbart, The Hill, People Magazine, The Daily Caller, Rolling Stone, Newsmax, The Washington Examiner, Politico, The New York Post, CNN, and The Daily Mail.
CNN’s Jake Tapper called the ad ‘very memorable,’ and The Dispatch editor and Never-Trumper Jonah Goldberg admitted to Tapper that the ad was ‘kind of brilliant’ for its clear ability to ‘stick in people’s heads’ and ‘get enormous free media.’ The ad was described as ‘buzzy’ in POLITICO Playbook and as ‘disgustingly good’ in New York magazine. The War Room’s Steve Bannon called it one of the ‘bolder ads’ that he’s ‘seen in recent years in politics.’
But Fox News host Neil Cavuto called the ad “childish” and “insulting.” Karl Rove flat out called the ad “stupid.” “Donald Trump is worried about Ron DeSantis,” Rove said. “Otherwise, why would he be out there now before DeSantis is even a candidate?”
NR’s Noah Rothman argues that neither the MAGA Inc. ad nor the Never Back Down spot leave a good taste in one’s mouth: “We’re left to conclude that neither of the two most competitive Republican presidential aspirants have any intention of tackling America’s foremost debt drivers, and that is meant to be a comfort to America’s voters. It is not.”
Yet Trump followed up the ad with a post on Truth Social doubling down on the line of attack: “Social Security and Medicare, and Ron’s attack on both, have destroyed DeSanctimonious. His love affair with Jeb Bush and Karl Rove, certainly haven’t helped, but being a DISCIPLE of ‘Wheelchair over the Cliff’ Paul Ryan, has been a disaster. Ron has lost his supporters and his support, and MAGA refuses to Endorse disloyal people!”
While Trump has taken to personal attacks on DeSantis, whom he has pejoratively nicknamed “Ron DeSantimonious,” the Florida governor has underscored his time spent working rather than getting dragged into Trump’s war of words.
DeSantis, speaking in Ohio, said: “Politics is not entertainment, it’s not about building a brand on social media . . . It’s about delivering results.” He also noted the Florida GOP’s big victory in November and media coverage of Florida Democrats’ demise. “That’s what you call winning.”
DeSantis, for his part, has also denied using his fingers to eat pudding during an interview with Fox News. And while pudding-gate was part of a larger Daily Beast story meant to draw attention to DeSantis’s lack of charisma, Politico reported that the Florida Republican bucked his “robot reputation” during a trip to New Hampshire last week when he headlined a sold-out state GOP dinner. At the dinner, DeSantis received multiple standing ovations and was “swarmed” for photos after his speech. He met with attendees for more than an hour, shaking hands and taking photos in an unplanned display of retail politicking.
Trump was not the only Republican lobbing attacks against DeSantis this week. Chris Christie, who is considering his own 2024 bid and is one of the more vocal Trump critics of the potential Republican field, shared criticism of the Florida governor over his handling of the ongoing battle between Disney and the Sunshine State.
“I don’t think Ron DeSantis is a conservative based on his actions towards Disney,” he said, adding that the job of government is to “stay out of the business of business.”
“Where are we headed here now? If you express disagreement in this country, the government is allowed to punish you? To me, that’s what I always thought liberals did,” Christie said.
He went on to say that DeSantis’s failure to foresee Disney’s response to his actions means he is “not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi and negotiating our next agreement with China or sitting across from Putin and trying to resolve what’s happening in Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, as questions mount about the potential success of a DeSantis bid, Representative John Rutherford on Tuesday became the sixth Florida Republican of the Sunshine State’s 20-member GOP delegation to endorse Trump. He joins Representatives Greg Steube, Cory Mills, Anna Paulina Luna, Byron Donalds, and Matt Gaetz in supporting the former president. The recent flurry of endorsements is no accident, according to Politico, which reported today that Trump officials sent emails to Florida members on Sunday asking for support ahead of DeSantis’s planned meeting in D.C. with GOP lawmakers on Tuesday.
Representative Lance Gooden of Texas also announced his endorsement of Trump on Tuesday “after careful consideration and a positive meeting” with DeSantis. His endorsement came as a surprise even to Team Trump, according to Politico.
“I met with Governor DeSantis, and while he has done commendable work in Florida, there is no doubt in my mind that President Trump is the only leader who can save America from the leftist onslaught we are currently facing,” Gooden said in a statement.
Around NR
• Mike Pompeo announced last week that he will not run for president in 2024 after all. “Susan and I have concluded, after much consideration and prayer, that I will not present myself as a candidate to become President of the United States in the 2024 election,” the former secretary of state said. More from Caroline Downey here.
• “Mike Pompeo could see the handwriting on the wall,” Jim Geraghty writes. “Will any other prospective Republican candidate?”
“Take me seriously,” the long-shot candidate demands. Okay, you first. You had better have a real and serious plan to raise tens of millions of dollars to build up that name recognition that you don’t have. Your debate performances had better be a lot more than just smiling and reciting the same old talking points we’ve heard a million times before. Your platform had better have some clear, appealing policy goals that are simultaneously bold and achievable. . . . And you had better have the nerve to make a hard and fair critique of the frontrunners ahead of you, to their faces, on a debate stage.
• Will he or won’t he? That’s the question as Biden has delayed announcing his bid for reelection, which he once reportedly planned to announce this month. After the president’s recent trip to Ireland, Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote that he “got the overwhelming sense that Biden was going to announce his intention not to run for reelection,” but Dominic Pino argues Biden will in fact run:
He’s the incumbent president of the United States of America. Nobody in his party is both willing and able to defeat him in a primary. He raised more money than any presidential candidate in American history in 2020, and he’ll likely repeat that performance in 2024. His approval ratings aren’t that different from Obama’s at the same point during Obama’s first term. Biden likes being president. The only thing that would prevent him from running would be a severe health downturn. (And it would have to be pretty severe: John Fetterman is still a senator, remember.)
• Noah Rothman writes about an unappealing 2024 pitch from Trump: “Ditch the Pro-Life Stuff, Keep the 2020 Conspiracy Theory.”
If Trump was just trying to engineer a grand compromise with political realities following a prudential assessment of his and his party’s electoral viability, the GOP’s long-held pro-life views would not be led first to the chopping block. What Trump is willing to sacrifice are the opinions of others he never held himself. He assumed a pro-life posture in pursuit of a transactional arrangement with an interest group whose utility he now sees as spent. It’s not entirely clear what pro-life leaders would get out of a deal with Trump to support his bid for a second, final term in the White House. Maybe they should start shopping around for a better one.
Around the Web
• Trump has been notably silent on the boycott of Bud Light amid the brand’s controversial collaboration with transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney. Other 2024 candidates and potential contenders, including Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Mike Pence, backed the boycott in comments to RealClearPolitics, while Trump’s campaign failed to respond to requests for comment. Donald Trump Jr. recently urged conservatives to end their boycott of Bud Light and its parent company Anheuser-Busch. “We looked into the political giving and lobbying history of Anheuser-Busch and guess what? They actually support Republicans,” he said.
• Ross Douthat argues that DeSantis must run, despite naysayers who claim now is not the right time for the Florida governor with Trump still in the picture. “If DeSantis has presidential ambitions he simply has to run right now, notwithstanding all of the obstacles that they identify.” Presidential candidates, he argues, are “more likely to miss their moment . . . than they are to run too early and suffer a career-ending rebuke.”