The Weak Dictator DeSantis

 

I keep thinking I want to write something about Desantis (because he is uniquely awful as a 2024 GOP candidate and as a governor) but it just always feels like there is more Trump news. It's hard for even a dedicated, intentional troll to maintain headlines of any kind when your primary opponent is a) a former president and b) keeps getting indicted and stuff. So, in the midst of avoiding writing yet another damn TrumpWorld post, I thought I'd just catch up with Ron. 

Trump likes to tout that he's rising in the 2024 polls, but it's more the case that DeSantis, his nearest competitor, has fallen and possibly can't get up. The Florida governor's campaign "reset" just saw his campaign manager replaced with his state COS. He fired about a third of his campaign staff, but some campaign aides got jobs working for his state office.  

Some of his aides must have really shown quite the work ethic. His campaign does feel like it's chock-full of hustlers. 

Now, it might look like DeSantis is rewarding pals with state jobs at the taxpayer expense, but just because he used taxpayer money for his migrant flights from Texas to other states (arguably a stunt to raise his profile ahead of his presidential primary run) and has used taxpayer money for cars and plane trips for campaign purposes, doesn't mean he's....

Yeah. I guess it does kind of look like he's used his office to set himself up to....run this badly for president. Anyway. just because he's a weirdo who says off-putting things about slitting government workers' throats out loud in public where people can hear and doesn't seem to know what to do with his face, doesn't mean his donors and friends are giving up hope. They're giving up hope for far better reasons, like his unlikeable culture warring. (It's also costing his state a bit of money, too.) 

So, what's a guy to do when he gets bogged down in terrible news cycles and weak donations and spends his time arguing that slavery was so an effective unpaid internship for some people? (And hasn't he found just sort of dodgy characters who would agree with him? Cartoonishly, even.)

Well, if you're Ron DeSantis, you try to get a little earned media by "firing" an elected state prosecutor (and not for the first time!) 

Can he even do that? I don't know. It looks like in Florida, they just...let him? 

Now, this doesn't feel like a change he made to really do anything about crime in Florida. And he hasn't really done anything to make housing affordable, or fix the insurance crisis in Florida, and God forbid he address climate change, (I'm not saying he would slit a manatee's throat for a bump in the polls, but I'm certainly not implying he wouldn't.) 

But maybe for a minute there, we all were going to concentrate on how awful Ron is so he could be seen defending himself against the pro-crime woke Soros machine liberal establishment without some Trump news bigfooting his headline--right?

Ah, I see you, Puddin' Fingers. I'm also trying not to bring up malaria, leprosy, flesh-eating bacteria, his politicization of health care, red tide, flooding, and how Florida is now doing away with teaching Dead White European Males like Shakespeare because they're too raunchy. I mean, if I wanted to, I could write about DeSantis and his little ineffective dictatorship where he has a lot of power and just does trolly stuff for his own political benefit and it still isn't really helping ALL DAY. 

But I won't because that damn TrumpWorld post is banging on my forebrain for release, so off I go.