News : DeSantis’ weakness as Trump slayer has GOP rivals smelling blood

Friday, May 19, 2023

DeSantis’ weakness as Trump slayer has GOP rivals smelling blood

May 19, 2023

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By Charlie Mahtesian

Presented by Flex Association

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a political roundtable in Bedford, N.H.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a political roundtable in Bedford, N.H. | Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo

PAPER TIGER? — Next week is poised to be one of the most eventful of the 2024 presidential campaign. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) today filed his official paperwork to run, in advance of his home state launch event Monday. Ron DeSantis is expected to officially kick off his bid later in the week, when he hopes to be the latest Florida governor to declare his candidacy with a shock-and-awe rollout.

And that might not be the end of it. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu told Puck this week there’s a “61 percent chance” he runs for president. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is nearing a decision to launch in the next few weeks. Chatter about a possible Chris Christie bid is rising; the former New Jersey governor said in late April he’d make a decision in a few weeks.

There’s also Hamlet-on-the-James-River, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, another political heavyweight who can’t seem to avert his eye from the race.

No seasoned, successful politician runs for president without a theory of the case — a detailed and plausible path to victory. And as more prospective candidates surface, it’s becoming clearer what’s at the heart of those plans: a growing belief within the party that DeSantis is a paper tiger.

At one time, the Florida governor looked to be the candidate best positioned to knock off Trump, en route to finishing off President Joe Biden. DeSantis was Trump without the baggage — and 32 years younger.

He was coming off an epic 2022 reelection victory in the nation’s third-largest state, marked by Florida’s biggest winning margin in 40 years. Officials in both parties did a double take at his robust performance among all Latino groups.

With DeSantis, the GOP could get the same conservative policies as Trump, the same unyielding approach, the same judges, the same trolling of the libs. He was a party leader on Covid. The suburbs would be back in play. So would the five states Biden flipped from Trump in 2020.

But DeSantis’ Disney jihad and his Ukraine-is-a-territorial-dispute stumble have undermined his aura of competence among donors and the business community. Trump’s relentless attacks — none of them answered — and his drum beat of abuse have left the two-term governor bruised. Far from projecting strength, DeSantis suddenly appears to be a candidate who’s thrived in a protective cocoon, isolated from media scrutiny, and surrounded by a compliant legislature afraid to test him.

On the eve of his launch, DeSantis now confronts the perception that he is a porcelain candidate, glazed and decorative, durable enough, but not really built to withstand the blunt impact of Trump’s hammer or the full fury of a united Democratic Party.

Yet the notion that DeSantis is ripe for a takedown is only part of the reason why the presidential race is suddenly looking so enticing. In the three years since Trump lost reelection, there is little evidence to suggest he can win back the White House and much evidence to suggest he’ll drag the party to defeat with him.

This is what a healthy portion of the GOP political operative class — and the donor class — believes. Most of Trump’s primary rivals think it, too. Some of them, like Christie, are willing to say it out loud.

“Donald Trump has done nothing but lose since he won the election in 2016. We lost the House in 2018. The Senate and the White House in 2020. We underperformed in 2022 and lost more governorships and another Senate seat,” he said in a recent radio interview.

DeSantis says it privately. According to a New York Times report, the governor told supporters and donors in a call Thursday that Trump can’t win, pointing to “all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him.”

Against that backdrop, it’s not a bad bet to jump in now under the expectation of filling the role DeSantis was once assumed to hold. But there is a sense of urgency: any new entrants must get in before DeSantis has the opportunity to use his considerable resources to make it a two-person primary with Trump. The clock begins ticking next week.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on Twitter at @PoliticoCharlie.

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What'd I Miss?

— GOP negotiators hit ‘pause’ on debt talks: Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s lead negotiator on the debt limit said today he plans to “press pause” on talks with the White House, a snag that imperils both parties’ efforts to reach a default-averting deal as soon as this weekend. A White House official acknowledged that a snag had occurred without indicating that either side had walked away from the table: “There are real differences between the parties on budget issues and talks will be difficult. The president’s team is working hard towards a reasonable bipartisan solution that can pass the House and the Senate.”

— Guardsman Jack Teixeira, Pentagon leak suspect, to remain jailed as he awaits trial: A Massachusetts Air National Guard member charged with leaking highly classified military documents will remain behind bars while he awaits trial, a federal magistrate judge ruled Friday. The ruling comes after prosecutors revealed that 21-year-old Jack Teixeira had a history of violent rhetoric, and was caught by superiors months before his arrest taking notes on classified information or viewing intelligence not related to his job.

— FBI misused surveillance authorities to investigate Black Lives Matter protesters: The FBI used a controversial foreign surveillance authority in 2020 to investigate whether protesters involved in the Black Lives Matter movement had ties to terrorists, according to two reports declassified today. The revelation that the FBI used these authorities comes amid a tough debate on Capitol Hill on whether to reauthorize the surveillance tool — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — before it expires at the end of the year, and is likely to make the push for renewal more difficult.

GET READY FOR GLOBAL TECH DAY: Join POLITICO Live as we launch our first Global Tech Day alongside London Tech Week on Thursday, June 15. Register now for continuing updates and to be a part of this momentous and program-packed day! From the blockchain, to AI, and autonomous vehicles, technology is changing how power is exercised around the world, so who will write the rules? REGISTER HERE.

Nightly Road to 2024

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) speaks during a town hall in Manchester, N.H.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) speaks during a town hall in Manchester, N.H. | Charles Krupa/AP Photo

HE’S RUNNING — Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) today filed paperwork to formally join a growing field of Republicans angling to overtake Donald Trump as the party’s 2024 standard-bearer, writes POLITICO’s Natalie Allison.

Scott, who grew up poor and in 2012 became the South’s first Black senator since Reconstruction, is expected to draw heavily from his own biography and success story as he talks about economic and social policy on the presidential campaign trail. Known as an upbeat, mild-mannered presence in the Senate who neither fiercely embraced nor sharply rebuked Trump’s politics, Scott in his underdog campaign is seeking to form a coalition of traditional conservatives, evangelical Christians and moderate Republicans.

ENEMIES LIST — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ high-profile fight with Walt Disney Co. is just one of several DeSantis has picked with major corporations — some before even he took office, reports POLITICO’s David Kihara. Now this latest gambit is costing Florida some 2,000 jobs after the global entertainment giant said Thursday it would scrap a $1 billion development plan in Florida.

With DeSantis expected to announce his presidential bid very soon, GOP rivals and leading Democrats are savaging him over the clash with one of the state’s biggest employers.

DeSantis’ playbook, though, highlights his populist streak and his willingness to push policies — and his politics — even if they lead to brawls with the tourism industry, agribusiness and Silicon Valley. His approach is quickly reshaping the relationship between big business and the GOP. Kihara reports on some of the other high-profile DeSantis scraps, including with Norwegian Cruise Line, U.S. Sugar and big tech companies.

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AROUND THE WORLD

TOP GUNS — The U.S. will support a joint international effort to train Ukrainian pilots on modern fighter aircraft, including F-16s, President Joe Biden informed G-7 leaders today in Japan.

The training will take place outside Ukraine at a site in Europe and will require months to complete, writes Lara Seligman. Officials hope to begin the training in the coming weeks, according to a senior administration official, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss the matter before it was announced.

The move could pave the way to eventually send advanced Western fighter jets to Ukraine, and discussions are ongoing about how and when that would happen, the official said.

The coalition of countries participating in the training effort will decide when to actually provide the jets, how many to send and who will transfer them as the training takes place over the coming months.

A larger, coordinated effort to train more pilots represents a significant turnaround for the Biden administration, which has resisted calls to conduct a dedicated training program for Ukrainian pilots. DoD officials have argued that the F-16s weren’t necessary for the immediate fight, and have noted that it could take up to a year or more to complete the necessary training. Officials also worried that sending the jets could escalate the conflict because they could be used to hit targets inside Russia.

Biden’s decision came overnight East Coast time amid a day of deliberations among the leaders of the G-7 nations, but discussions have been in the works for weeks, a second U.S. official said.

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Nightly Number

At least $3 billion

The amount by which the Pentagon overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine, an accounting error that could allow the Biden administration to send more weapons to Ukraine’s war effort without allocating new funding. The acknowledgment of the overestimation comes as the Pentagon is under increasing scrutiny about transparency in its efforts to aid Ukraine.

RADAR SWEEP

PAY YOUR WAY — College admissions are in flux. The Supreme Court appears poised to strike down affirmative action, more students than ever have “A” averages and more schools are eschewing the SAT and ACT. So high school students who are interested in going to elite colleges and want to stand out are turning to new programs. One of these is attempting to have “peer-reviewed” research published. And there’s a new cottage industry helping high schoolers do this, with publications like “Scholarly Review,” a home for high school students’ work, popping up. Parents are often spending between $2,500 to $10,000 to get their children into programs that promise publication. So, amidst all of this discussion of equality, has the process of getting into college actually gotten any fairer? Daniel Golden reports for ProPublica.

Parting Image

On this date in 1976: California Gov. Jerry Brown smiles as he waves to supporters at his Baltimore campaign headquarters after beating Jimmy Carter in the Maryland Democratic presidential primary. Brown ultimately finished third in delegate count in the primary, behind Carter and Arizona Rep. Mo Udall.