What the Manhattan DA’s office taught us about a Trump vs. DeSantis 2024 contest
W. James Antle III
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Whatever Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg does next, he has through the reports of a coming indictment revealed how former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) would handle each other in a 2024 Republican primary campaign.
DeSantis quickly pushed back against the potential indictment on the merits, though not volubly enough for Trump’s strongest supporters, while at the same time subtly restating the case against the former president’s fitness for the nomination.
Trump immediately struck back, reconsidered it, and then escalated his attacks against DeSantis even further still.
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DeSantis agreed that the impending prosecution is politically motivated, while noting the charges involve “paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” something the Florida governor added he never had to do.
Trump responded by telling “DeSanctimonious” that he would learn about unfair attacks in due time after getting into the presidential race — and then telegraphing that Trump himself planned to launch some of those attacks and hinting what they might be.
Expect that to be part of a larger pattern as the two Florida men at the top of the Republican field move closer to direct confrontation.
Trump, who is already a declared candidate and was the Republican presidential nominee for the past two elections, has never shied away from conflict.
DeSantis, who has not announced a presidential run and is believed to be waiting for the end of the Florida legislative session to do so, has been reluctant to engage.
But lately, DeSantis has been contrasting himself with Trump without mentioning the former president’s name. The husband of Casey DeSantis does not pay hush money to porn stars. He does not have leaks or drama inside his team. He has made sound personnel choices and focused on the task at hand.
“I didn’t have a single leak in my administration,” DeSantis recently told Fox News. “You could have the best vision in the world, make the best decisions as the executive — if you don’t have people that will carry out that and implement it, then it’s not gonna amount to very much.”
No overt mention of Trump was made. None was necessary.
Trump has a different approach. He goes straight for the jugular every time. He repeats rumor and innuendo, with little regard for plausibility. But he is also capable of sizing up his opponents and detecting their real vulnerabilities.
There are risks for Trump here. By swinging wildly at his fellow Republicans, he can reinforce DeSantis’s subtext that the party needs a no-drama nominee to win in 2024. Trump’s jibes could seem childish or beneath the presidency. His act may start to wear thin. And Republicans may begin to resent that he is willing to burn down the big tent in order to save it.
DeSantis can much more easily abandon his stealthy criticisms of Trump to support him as the nominee than vice versa. That might be a selling point to Republicans eager to beat President Joe Biden.
The risk for DeSantis is that what Trump does has worked in the past. It worked against 16 Republicans in 2016. It mostly worked in the GOP primaries, at least, in the midterm elections. And, depending on which polls you believe, there are some signs it could be working now.
Which DeSantis definition holds in the minds of Republican primary voters is key. The competent conservative governor who went from eking it out in a battleground state like George W. Bush to winning it in a Ronald Reagan landslide versus someone aping Trump as plainly as an Elvis impersonator imitates the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Trump and DeSantis are both campaigning as if they understand this clearly. The rest of the GOP field can only hope the top two candidates bloody each other enough to give one of them an opening.
There are other larger themes at play here: whether the Republican primaries should be about loyalty to Trump the man or the competent implementation of a substantially Trumpist agenda; who can be counted on to most faithfully execute that agenda; who better symbolizes resistance to and could perhaps achieve victory over a perceived weaponization of government by the Left.
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But the language of that campaign, pitting an understated study in contrasts against a full-fledged political knife fight against a combatant given to overstatement, is already taking shape.