Meat ball rolling...

DeSantis retools his anti-Trump argument

By KIMBERLY LEONARD 

Gov. Ron DeSantis used last night’s CNN town hall to try out a fresh argument about why he should be the Republican presidential nominee instead of Donald Trump.

It seemed to boil down to: “Don’t like how things are going under President Joe Biden? Blame the guy who was in the White House before him.” It wasn’t the first time DeSantis attacked Trump on national television, but it signaled an evolution in his messaging. Throughout the night, he laid out ways that Trump’s failures to deliver on certain promises set the stage for what he saw as some of Biden’s worst policies.

The earliest sign of this last night was when he got a question from an audience member about the economy. The policies under Trump had been good for the first three years, DeSantis said, then the Trump administration mishandled Covid through stimulus checks and lockdowns. That allowed Biden to come in and “pour gas on the fire.”

On the surge of migrants entering the U.S., Trump’s failure to build the wall made it easier for Biden to have a more lax illegal immigration policy, he said.

He also blamed Trump for political divisiveness in the U.S., citing his social media posts and ways that he attacks people, and said that paved the way for Biden’s anti-MAGA speech in Philadelphia.

Over the course of the event, DeSantis again tried to contrast himself with Trump as someone who followed through on what he said he’d do. Only this time he was able to articulate why that should matter to voters.

“I’m the only one running who has beat these people,” DeSantis said. “We beat the teachers union with school choice. We beat Fauci on Covid. I beat the left prosecutors. We beat the Dems on election integrity. We have delivered victory after victory.”

On top of that, DeSantis doubled down on Trump attacks he made before, questioning Trump’s motives to run for president, underscoring that Trump made few appearances in Iowa and calling out his criticism of Florida’s six-week abortion ban. In all, CNN tallied eight attacks on Trump.

DeSantis even linked a Satanic Temple display at the Iowa state Capitol to Trump, given that under his administration the IRS approved the group for tax-exempt status.

But overall DeSantis took a less combative tone at the town hall than he does typically (with the exception of when he talked about former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley) and even raised several of his bipartisan accomplishments in Florida. In an effort to close the gap against Trump, DeSantis is welcoming every opportunity for interviews and appearances like the one he did last night, even if it does mean embracing media outlets he has historically avoided.

A year ago, DeSantis was the clear favorite in a hypothetical GOP matchup against Trump. But now an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll shows he’s 30 points behind Trump in Iowa despite big-name endorsements, millions of dollars in spending and visiting the state’s 99 counties. In a recent New Hampshire poll, DeSantis fell to fifth place. Ever since launching his campaign, DeSantis has struggled to articulate his argument for why voters should choose him instead of Trump, and he has often avoided criticizing Trump.

While it’s not clear when and how taking on Trump differently would have changed the expected outcome of the GOP primary, the Trump campaign spent months attacking DeSantis before he even made a presidential run official, and hasn’t stopped. What DeSantis has been saying so far hasn’t worked, and he has less than five weeks to sell Iowans on his candidacy ahead of the caucuses.