As we have seen over the last two weeks, there is a leak campaign against Tucker Carlson via Media Matters. The leaks are of off-air banter and joking that is typical on television shows between live segments. None of those Media Matters leaks made Tucker look bad to anyone who wasn’t already a hater or a dishonest mainstream media journalist.
A similar thing just happened to Ron DeSantis via a leaked video of his 2018 gubernatorial debate prep in which, as happens in debate prep, a lot of strategy never intended for airing is exchanged.
The leak was to Disney’s ABC News. Do you think it was a coincidence that the leak was to a Disney entity? I doubt it. Trump has been very critical of DeSantis for taking on Disney’s woke agenda, and has tried to use that fight with Disney against DeSantis. So it’s logical that if the leak was via Team Trump, they would go through a Disney entity.
Who leaked the debate prep video to ABC News? Well, like the leaks of the Tucker tapes to Media Matters, that’s not yet proven from an evidentiary standpoint. But there’s plenty of reason to think it was a Trump-aligned person or entity because the highlighted part of the leak was DeSantis discussing whether his having voted on some ocasions as a congressman contrary to Trump might “piss off his voters.”
That is a theme we’ve heard often – that DeSantis has to challenge Trump but worry about pissing off Trump voters. I think that has it wrong. Winning will not “piss off” Trump voters, except for the dead-ender “OnlyTrump” voters who regularly threaten to make sure that any Republican nominee other than Trump will be sabotaged in the general election by them. There is a segment of OnlyTrumpers who are just as much hostage takers as NeverTrumpers and cannot be reasoned with — either they get their way or they say they will try to undermine the Republican nominee. DeSantis need not worry about pissing off OnlyTrumpers, they already are a lost cause or so they say. DeSantis and any other candidate should not negotiate with hostage takers. But I don’t think most Trump voters fit into that category, so DeSantis should not worry that staking out principled positions and winning will “piss off” Trump voters.
Equally important, if you listen to the actual video, and not the Disney/ABC News hype, DeSantis stakes out a very honest and resonable position: If asked about his votes contrary to Trump, despite worrying about pissing off his voters, he will respond truthfully that while he generally supports Trump’s policies, he doesn’t agree on everything, and will vote the way he sees it:
“So what I do is, I do what I think is right. I support his agenda, in terms of what he’s been able to do, when I have a disagreement, I talk to him in private.”
So substantively, despite the Disney/ABC News spin, there’s no there there in the leak.
That hasn’t stopped pro-Trump accounts from promoting the video:
Nonetheless, it has upset two people who participated in DeSantis’ debate prep and now are backing Trump, Reps. Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz. That they are trying to pump the brakes on use of the leaked tape is pretty good proof that Trump world recognizes that the leak may backfire just as it backfired against Tucker.
Hey, you bought the ticket, now go for the ride, is a theme pushed by pro-DeSantis people:
No one in DeSantis Twitter world seems worried, nor should they be.
Getting back to who is to blame, this is a sign of weakness, just like the almost daily pronouncements that the primary is over, DeSantis should just drop out, and so on. No one who really thinks that DeSantis has no chance acts with the fear that motivates attacking him two days before the midterms and almost every day since then.
DeSantis reportedly will be skipping the “exploratory committee” phase and moving straight to announcing a run for president. Let the fun begin.
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