Presidential primaries get very dirty, and that’s to be expected.
But here in April 2023, the GOP one has already descended into a disgusting spiral of lies and insanity — because of the increasingly disordered and amateurish Donald Trump campaign.
Trump has a clear lane in the primary.
He has a record of accomplishment as president; he led the country to prosperity that has since sharply declined; he exposes the politicization and corruption of our government agencies when he’s personally targeted by leftist activist district attorneys like Alvin Bragg and when he is the subject of a baseless search for documents at his home.
He remains absolutely beloved by a segment of the Republican base.
Boom, boom, boom.
Yet he, and the not-very-smart people around him, have decided that for him to win the primary he needs to not only destroy Florida’s extremely popular Gov. Ron DeSantis (who has not yet even announced a presidential run), but also to demolish all of DeSantis’ conservative policies and practices that have been so wildly successful in the sunshine state.
On Friday, the Trump campaign released a bizarre statement trashing Florida — the state that Trump, and nearly everyone in his immediate family including three of his grown children and their own families, have made their home during the DeSantis administration.
“The real DeSantis record is one of misery and despair,” said Trump spokesman Steven Cheung. DeSantis “has left a wake of destruction all across Florida and people are hurting because he has spent more time playing public relations games instead of actually doing the hard-work needed to improve the lives of the people he represents.”
Floridians seem to disagree with this assessment, having just handed our governor a nearly 20-point win in November.
To prove this “wake of destruction,” the campaign plucked random factoids, many of them from far-left sources.
A leftist thinktank called Florida one of the most expensive states to live in. A leftist organization noted Florida is one of the worst places to work.
Yet over 700,000 people have moved to Florida in the last few years, and they keep on coming. Someone let them know: Leftists, and Donald Trump, think Florida is super bad!
On Thursday, a number of Florida members of Congress who had endorsed the president’s re-election campaign (even after he recently said that Democrats like Charlie Crist also did a good job in the state) stood grinning for a picture at Mar-a-Lago.
The very next day they were forced to answer whether they too believe Florida “continues to tumble into complete and total delinquency and destruction.”
All of this is a lie.
And Trump knows it’s a lie. By Friday night, Florida was no longer an apocalyptic hellscape and those sycophants who had spent the day agreeing with Trump that Florida is simply the worst were cut off at the legs.
“I’m thrilled to be here with the proud, hard-working patriots of the great state of Florida. It’s a great state. Great place.” Trump said at the Republican Party of Lee County Lincoln Reagan Dinner in Fort Myers.
Didn’t sound so great this morning, sir!
If it doesn’t make sense, welcome to the Trump campaign.
For months, his campaign has attacked DeSantis as some globalist shill, supported by Paul Ryan — notwithstanding the total lack of evidence for any of that.
If you don’t remember who Ryan is, that’s OK: Just know he’s someone that Donald Trump raved about a number of times but is now Trumpspeak shorthand for everything wrong with the Republican Party.
Despite DeSantis being just a terrible governor, Trump demands full credit for him being elected.
Trump loves to talk about how DeSantis had no shot until Trump endorsed him. He’s the worst and I put him in office!
And then there are the attacks on DeSantis’ stellar handling of the pandemic.
My own family made the move to Florida in large part because of his sane and steady leadership during that time.
But to hear Trump tell it, DeSantis did a terrible job during COVID.
“Florida was closed for a long period of time,” Trump told his favorite audience, the media, in January. But then, a few days ago, he said, “He didn’t do well on COVID. He had more deaths than almost every country, in Florida. The thing he did well on was public relations because the numbers weren’t what they pretended to be.”
Somehow Florida both locked down too hard but also opened too soon and killed a lot of people.
And, in case you hadn’t heard the leftist conspiracy theory that DeSantis had faked Florida’s very average COVID death rate and stashed the bodies somewhere, Donald Trump is there to tell you all about it.
It’s understandable that Trump is threatened by DeSantis. Should the governor enter the race, he’d be a very formidable candidate.
But Trump is not just slamming an exceptional Republican governor with his stupid attacks, he’s attacking the very best Republican policies and the model Republican state.
DeSantis’ wins in Florida are celebrated because he has taken smart conservative policies and implemented them well to wild acclaim in what used to be a purple state but is, under his leadership, now reliably red. It’s what winning looks like.
Donald Trump supporters need to ask themselves: How much of that are they willing to sacrifice to defend their guy? And why?
Karol Markowicz is co-author of the new book “Stolen Youth.” Twitter: @Karol