Even with 2024 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump holding on to a firm lead in primary polling despite two indictments in three months, the Usual Suspects in the media and on the left still seem to be convinced for some reason that at some point his chief rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, will one day move ahead.
How do we know this? Because the next installment of their “DeSantis is worse than Trump” narrative is being ushered in once again.
This time around, it was MSNBC’s Joy Reid who got the ball rolling in a segment with Lincoln Project senior adviser Stuart Stevens on Monday night, where both were fretting over DeSantis’ alleged “fascist” tendencies and where Stevens declared that “Their second choice is a guy who is worse than Trump”:
JOY REID: And Stewart, I’m going to give you the last word on this because Chris Christie got booed for telling the truth about Trump. So, and he’s at 5 percent, he’s, you know, he’s somewhere, he’s not nowhere. He’s ahead of Nikki Haley and some of the others. But what does it say about the Republican Party that the next guy down is Ron DeSantis, who is running the most openly fascist campaign I think I’ve ever seen. And I’m saying that, having covered Donald Trump running for president. That’s the next guy down.STUART STEVENS: Yeah, I mean, I suppose if you’re inside the DeSantis war room, you got to think of a way to get yourself indicted to get up ahead of Donald Trump. You know, this just goes to my point that this is what the party wants to be. And it’s a hard thing for a lot of us who worked in the party to accept, that we helped create this monster. But we did. And this is very purposeful by the party. But it’s not something they stumbled into. Their second choice is a guy who is worse than Trump. So it’s a threat to what it means really to be an American. And I think we have to realize that and address it accordingly.
Stevens did not elaborate on what he meant by “what it really means to be an Amerian” and “address it accordingly,” but as you might imagine, the latter likely includes more fearmongering and hyperventilating over how the Lincoln Project America will not survive if DeSantis wins the nomination over Trump and defeats Joe Biden in the general election.
Watch:
This is the same Stuart Stevens, I should point out, who thought it would be cute last summer to make fun of Ron DeSantis’ weight and military service.
He was wrong:
Vox.com senior reporter Ian Millhiser also got in a dig at DeSantis in a recent tweet, reminding his followers that though DeSantis has in Millhiser’s words “tanked” in the polls, he was still extremely dangerous and “evil”:
New Republic editor Michael Tomasky had a slightly different take, believing that DeSantis isn’t quite there yet on being worse than Trump, but “wants to be”:
Naturally, the DeSantis presidential campaign’s rapid response “War Room” Twitter account has turned such attacks into an advantage, and if you watch the below video, you’ll see why:
I mean I would have to think that after seeing that series of clips that some fence-sitters on the GOP side who are torn between Trump and DeSantis might just have an easier time making up their minds because, ironically, DeSantis’ unhinged critics in those segments made him look even more impressive.
Of course, let’s all remember that this is the standard operating procedure for the MSM and Democrats, as we’ve seen over the course of several presidential election cycles going back decades:
That said, make no mistake, “Worse Than Trump™” is here to stay for the foreseeable future:
Buckle up!
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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