The emasculation of Ron DeSantis by bully Donald Trump
Donald J. Trump plumbed new depths of degradation in his brutal defeat of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a yearslong campaign of emasculation and humiliation that helped push one of the party's rising stars out of the presidential race after just one game forced and left him to his fate. picking up the pieces of his political future.
Before a huge audience, Mr. Trump portrayed Mr. DeSantis as a submissive brat, insisting he had cried and begged “on his knees” for support in Florida's 2018 gubernatorial race.
In a series of sexually charged attacks, Mr. Trump suggested — without evidence — that Mr. DeSantis wore high heels, that he might be homosexual and that he might be a pedophile.
He promised that intense national scrutiny would leave Mr. DeSantis whining for “mama.”
Mr. DeSantis shied away from fighting back, which only hurt his campaign more. The governor had portrayed himself as one of the Republican Party's fiercest political fighters, but he held his own in the most important race of his life.
Now he is both defeated and humiliated. His departure from the race on Sunday was far from falling out of favor after he opened his campaign as heir apparent in a Trumpified Republican Party. Restoring that reputation as he considers his next political move will require a lot of repair work among donors and Republican voters, thanks to Trump's relentless parade of insults over 242 days of his campaign.
“I don't care if he's a Republican,” Mr. Trump said of his disparagement of Mr. DeSantis at a November meeting of the Republican Party of Florida — the governor's home. “We hit him hard, and now he's like a wounded bird falling from the sky.”
But even more crushing was Mr. DeSantis' response, or lack thereof.
After releasing a 2022 campaign video that portrayed him as a political warrior sent from heaven, he seemed unwilling or unable to return to Trump or go on the offensive. Even Trump aides were surprised that DeSantis' campaign didn't attack the former president harder on issues where he could be vulnerable to conservatives, such as abortion.
And the irritable nature of Mr. DeSantis' personality, which could express itself in an uncomfortable mix of detachment, moodiness and facial tics, provided an irresistible target for Mr. Trump, who seemed to delight in bullying Mr. DeSantis as if he a freshman in a locker in high school.
Still, Mr. DeSantis remains popular in his home state, and he is also being watched outside Florida relatively favorable. As a presidential candidate, he had to succeed where every Republican before him had failed: pry loyal Trump supporters away from the former president without alienating them.
Mr. Trump has long pushed the boundaries of accepted political behavior, relentlessly advancing the racist “birther” lie about President Barack Obama and calling on his supporters to jail Hillary Clinton. But his campaign reached new levels of brutality against a fellow Republican.
The missions were often led by Trump's chief spokesman, Steven Cheung, who drew on his background as a PR agent for the Ultimate Fighting Championship to deliver brutal slams with the force of the sport's suffocating guillotine stranglehold.
In November, Mr. Cheung told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. DeSantis would face “unimaginable pain that he has never felt before in his life.”
In a press release, he questioned Mr. DeSantis' masculinity, saying he walked like “a 10-year-old girl who had just raided her mother's closet and discovered heels for the first time.”
Mr. Cheung also called the Florida governor a “desperate eunuch,” wondered why Mr. DeSantis “made a fool of himself” in front of the entire country — sexual jargon that implies weakness in a man — and accused him of to look for “new sugar daddies” to finance his campaign. He called Mr. DeSantis a “disloyal dog.”
Mr. DeSantis fought back with a more traditional approach.
His campaign introduced a “Trump Accident Tracker” in a daily email to the news media highlighting Trump's missteps on the trail. He criticized Trump's “juvenile insults” and said voters didn't like them. (The outburst of laughter at the Trump rallies suggested otherwise.)
Mr. DeSantis ultimately tried to improve his game.
Respond to accusations that he wore raises in his cowboy boots to appear tallerMr. DeSantis questioned Mr. Trump's masculinity.
“If Donald Trump can muster the balls to show up to the debate, I will wear a boot on my head,” Mr. DeSantis said.
The line didn't seem to land. Mr. DeSantis himself has admitted that, unlike Mr. Trump, he is “not an entertainer.”
At the same time, pro-Trump online influencers formed a troll army that pumped out content such as videos showing a man with Mr. DeSantis' face being kicked in the groin. By comparison, Mr. DeSantis' online activities proved woefully inept.
The differing approaches stemmed in part from a fixation on Mr. DeSantis at Trump's headquarters, where hostility toward the governor ran high.
Not only was Mr. Trump outraged by what he saw as a striking lack of loyalty from Mr. DeSantis, but the Trump campaign also includes former DeSantis campaign aides who were fired or otherwise felt mistreated by the Florida governor, including Susie Wiles. from the former president's closest confidantes. Many still had an ax to grind.
“Bye bye,” Ms. Wiles posted on social media on Sunday about her former boss, who had tried to ban her from Republican politics.
Mr. DeSantis' quick approval on Sunday could help heal some of those wounds. Hours later, Mr. Trump vowed to retire the “DeSanctimonious” nickname, and his allies began posting messages welcoming Mr. DeSantis to Trump's return.
But aides said Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis still had not spoken.
Asked whether the two men could mend their relationship, Mr Cheung held his fire.
“We are focusing on New Hampshire,” he said.
Ken Bensinger contributed reporting from Los Angeles.