Here in guilt-free Florida we’re often asked if Ron DeSantis is really worse than Donald Trump. Not long ago the question would have seemed ludicrous because Trump had set the bar of execrable behavior so high. Who could outpander the most prolific panderer of all time? Who could be worse for democracy than the person who snuggled up to murderous dictators, spoke fondly of white supremacists, smeared Mexican immigrants as rapists and killers, tried to overturn an election, and incited a goon siege of the Capitol? The list goes on.
Technically, the ex-president isn’t a true Florida man; he’s just another rich tax refugee. DeSantis is a native, one of our own, and he has proven himself to be just as thin-skinned, soulless, and vengeful as Trump. Betraying his political godfather to seek the Republican presidential nomination demanded more of DeSantis than casual disloyalty; he needed a metaphorical crowbar to pry his perpetually pinched lips from Trump’s ass.
From then on, his strategy was to slither past Trump on the right. As governor he has delightedly signed new laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community, abortion rights, gun restrictions, voting liberties, conversations about the history of racism, and from his boundless well of spite, Disney. All that, plus—according to a campaign video—a personal endorsement from God, and still DeSantis is polling a drab, distant second to Trump.
Clearly the governor isn’t getting credit for being as awful as he is. Have people already forgotten that his mid-pandemic reversal on COVID vaccines killed off untold numbers of Floridians who’d naively looked to him for guidance? It takes the icy soul of a fentanyl dealer to factor customer mortality into your own marketing plan.
Although critics say DeSantis is Trump Lite, the two differ sharply. DeSantis isn’t lazy, and he actually likes to read. Onstage he sticks to a script, while Trump prefers rambling bombast. (Some claim Trump has a better sense of humor, but it was DeSantis who appointed a January 6 rioter to the state board that oversees massage parlors.)
Trump has the big reputation for dodging questions, but DeSantis is hard-core slippery. While his wife, Casey, was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, DeSantis refused to confirm or deny that he’d received the newest COVID booster. Afraid to rile his new anti-vaccine base, the once masked and pro-vax governor clammed up from late December 2021 to mid-January 2022, when the virus raged. New cases in Florida topped 60,000 a day, filling ERs, ICUs, and funeral homes.
Everyone familiar with cancer is aware that chemotherapy can weaken immune systems, increasing one’s vulnerability to COVID. Yet when asked if he got the booster shot, DeSantis wouldn’t say no or yes, even if it was only to protect his wife. “Gutless” was how Trump described such dodges, but DeSantis showed his true self by resisting the pressure to set a good example, and to appear caring. (More than 89,000 Floridians have died of COVID, but the governor sustains his campaign vibe by not mentioning them. He has, however, revealed that Casey DeSantis “responded very well” to her chemo treatments.)
As a hands-on autocrat, DeSantis methodically built the most regressive, intrusive, and punitive state bureaucracy in the nation. Despite a hurricane of legal challenges, the governor continues to gloat about his no-win feud with Disney, his venomous “Don’t say gay” crusade, his useless election police, and his random fly-outs of non-Florida migrants to blue states. DeSantis has fearlessly arranged for all these expensive stunts to be paid for with public dollars. Abetted by zombie supermajorities in the state House and Senate, DeSantis has spearheaded so many defective laws that this year nearly $16 million was budgeted for legal expenses, much of it to keep pace with the growing torrent of litigation.
Clearly, he is a more agile swamp dweller than Trump. Forget about garish Mar-a-Lago—did you know the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee has a “cabana”? Amenities include that expensive golf simulator machine provided by Mori Hosseini, a wealthy developer who has also let the governor use his private plane.
As reported by The Washington Post, companies controlled by Hosseini donated more than $360,000 to political groups that backed DeSantis’s re-election bid in 2022. Three weeks after his landslide win, the state announced it was setting aside $92 million in unspent COVID relief money for the building of an Interstate 95 interchange at the future site of a sprawling Hosseini retail and housing project near Daytona Beach. Ironically, the funds were plucked from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which DeSantis had previously denounced.
Trump is too scattered to orchestrate such windfall paybacks for major donors. DeSantis is a detail guy. For instance, when devising his scheme to relocate Colombian and Venezuelan migrants using private flights, the governor’s team made sure that the million-dollars-plus in state payments went to a small Panhandle aviation company with GOP connections.
