These are not glad tidings from Rick Wilson and to be honest, I was wondering if he wasn’t trolling in his recent interview in the Guardian wherein he predicts the Second Coming of Donald Trump, when the GOP makes the same mistake it made in 2016 and puts him atop the ticket. I didn’t think he could be serious.

That said, he made a compelling argument for how that very thing is going to happen. Read it and weep.

Wilson starts out by talking about how “Ron DeSantis won an election in Florida against a three-time loser, a campaign that was run by the best Republican party in the country, and I mean that because I’m a guy who helped over many years elect many people in the great state of Florida. The quality of our operation here made it look easy.”

“Has Ron DeSantis been to the rodeo? Has he been out there in the fight? Has he actually faced up against a full campaign of the brutality and the cruelty that Donald Trump will level against him? He has not. It’s like he’s walked on to the field on to third base and thought he hit a grand slam home run. It’s easy for Republicans to win in Florida. It’s how it’s supposed to be: we built it that way. In a Republican primary against Trump, even Trump in a weakened state still has an innate feral sense of cruelty and cunning that Ron DeSantis does not have. How does Trump know that? He watched the debate.”

Wilson is referring to a gubernatorial debate in which Crist asked his opponent to commit to another full four-year term in the governor’s mansion; like a rabbit caught in headlights, DeSantis, 44, struggled to answer directly.

“It was nine seconds of the gears moving in his head and you could see the agony on his face, like ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Trump never has a doubt. He may be an asshole but he never has a doubt. Ron is over-intellectualising it and I’m telling you: this guy has a glass jaw.

This, Wilson predicts, will become apparent on the debate stage, a setting where Florida Republicans such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio struggled against Trump in 2016. “All of a sudden, all that donor money is going to go, ‘Oh, fuck,’ and then they’re going to call Ron’s people and go, ‘Hey, listen, we love Ron but we’re worried. We’re gonna have to sit this one out for a little while. Let’s see what it looks like in a month.’

“And then a month will pass and all of a sudden Donald Trump is the nominee. That’s how it’s going to go and I don’t say this out of any joy; I say this because I’ve just been to this fucking party too many times now.”

Wilson also suggests that DeSantis may lack the personal touch and knack for retail politics that is crucial in a Republican primary. A recent New Yorker magazine profile noted several people describing “his lack of curiosity about others, his indifferent table manners, his aversion to the political rituals of dispensing handshakes and questions about the kids”.

Wilson opines: “You’re telling me you’re going to send Ron DeSantis to New Hampshire where he has to go and sit in a diner with the Merrimack county GOP chairman and that 79-year-old codger is going to want to talk to Ron DeSantis about the gold standard or whatever and Ron DeSantis is going to sit there and get bored and restless and leave or be angry? I’m sorry. Sell me another fantasy of Ron DeSantis the perfect candidate.

These are all valid points. And you have to give it to Wilson, he has been in this field for a very long time and he is right there in Florida, at ground zero, watching all this. It’s a bit difficult to dispute his conclusions given the advantages of perspective that he brings to the table.

What about the donors deserting Trump? Wilson says they’ll be back. He predicts that once Trump has eaten DeSantis alive in a debate or two and his numbers start ticking up again that a time of reevaluation will take place, people with get cold feet vis a vis DeSantis and the checkbooks will come back out for Trump.

And one thing is undeniable: the GOP has had any number of occasions to turn Trump loose. They had two impeachments, for God’s sake. They could have cut bait at any time. They won’t. Even with Trump’s catastrophic performance just this week of having the neo-Nazi over to supper, the GOPers are not coming out and condemning his behavior. They’re too scared to.

It just might come down this way. Bookmark this piece. Let’s see what we’re talking about in 2023. Because the fact of the matter is, Trump is on the ropes. He’s desperate. Nothing is more dangerous than a wounded, cornered animal and if you want to see a display of innate, feral cruelty, those are the conditions that will produce it. I think Wilson is right, about all of it.

And I’m not happy to say that, but facing reality is better than denial. Other than legal catastrophe befalling Trump and that may well happen, too, this could be the scenario we’re looking at, leading into Election 2024. And actually, it could be a benefit. Joe Biden beat Trump like a drum once, I believe he’ll do it again.

Trump thinks he’s going to be the next Grover Cleveland. Maybe he’s going to be the next Adlai Stevenson. Works for me.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. I fear that absent Trump getting convicted of either state or federal crimes (preferably both) Wilson is correct that Trump will again get the GOP nomination. Where I disagree is on the cruelty thing. DeSantis is every bit a cruel as Trump, and also far more in control of himself and able to marshal that cruelty into policy and law than Trump. DeSantis’ problem is what Wilson identified – he’s got a glass jaw. He simply doesn’t have the guts and/or spine to go toe-to-toe with Trump. And I simply don’t think he can acquire/grow either before primary season begins. For the moment DeSantis is, like the old GOP establishment did in 2015 & especially 2016 hoping someone else will take Trump out. People set on the sideline far too long waiting for someone else to wade in with the axe and get bloody, and then pay the price by being in GOP political jail for having offended the huge percentage of outright racists in that Party.

    Like many others, DeSantis’ is banking on Democrats doing the dirty work for him. In court, where some measure of rules apply that Trump can’t get away with breaking. That in court Trump will face a no-nonsense judge(s) who won’t put up with his crap.

    But DeSantis has a problem. EVERYONE knows he is Trump’s main obstacle to the nomination and Trump isn’t going to sit around. He’s going to start going after Ron, and the longer Ron DeSantis waits to declare the more Trump will gouge out chunks from him! He doesn’t have a year to sit & wait for someone else to kill off the Trump Beast. And, like I said DeSantis doesn’t seem to have the fortitude to withstand an onslaught from Trump. But it’s coming and coming soon.

    This will be decided long before this time next year.

    11
    • “DeSantis is every bit a cruel as Trump, and also far more in control of himself and able to marshal that cruelty into policy and law than Trump.” This is soooo true. Scum-p has already started in on “DeSanctimonious” and it will only get worse.
      I, for one, would rather go up against the orange a-hole, who is a proven loser, than the newly anointed golden boy of the GOP, who has zero likeability but is a hell of a lot smarter than tfg.

  2. DeSantis isn’t going to be in it for wealth for himself as 45 has been and is. It will be for his ideology. Against Dems, immigrants, gays, women’s rights, ad neausea. He’s waiting to see what will happen in the next months. 45 indicted? Many GQP are pulling away from 45 – he dosen’t have the support he had. IMO, 45 will NOT get the nomination. Will the GQP choose someone more middle of the road? We shall see.

  3. F*** Rick Wilson…there, I said it. He’s PLAYING any liberal who is dumb enough to think what he’s talking about. I didn’t think that there was anything more disgusting than Keith Olbermann’s baseless claims that Jack Smith is going to bury the case against Trump. I should have had more faith in Wilson’s shamelessness.

    So why is he doing this? 1) To keep the grift he’s got going…it’s just that, unlike Trump, OUR crowd is his marks. 2) Like all Republicans right now, he’s scared shitless…of MAGA finishing him off, of him being permanently unemployed, of the conservative ideal he has spent his life serving collapsing into nothing.

    At best, he was always a temporary (and highly ineffective in the actual “get shit done” department) ally. The time has come, friends, to treat him like the enemy he was always going to become. Give me Liz Cheney over this failed courtier.

    • As I said above, my initial take was that Wilson was trolling. And he might be. But bottom line: IF the GOP does the unthinkable and renominates Trump, good. Biden will beat him again.

      My point in all this is that I think Wilson’s analysis of the GOP is not all that off base. They could do something like still back Trump. Just look at this past week, with the mess at Mar-a-Lago with West and Fuentes. They’ll all silent, co-signing on it as usual

      Ergo, Wilson might be right, that they’ve learned nothing and will repeat their mistakes.

      • Oh, the GOP hasn’t learned anything in 20 years, Ursula, which Wilson is proof of. But with Jack Smith making his moves on his case (to say nothing of Fulton County), I’m having a hard time believing that Trump will get anywhere anytime soon. It’s not 2016 anymore, Trump is strictly interested in maintaining the grift and Republicans of the MAGA stripe have yet to wake up fully to the fact that Gen Z is going to outnumber them by 2024.

  4. DeSantis is pretty cruel stupid enough to.take on his state’s largest employer. That takes,a,special.sauce of cruelty AND stupidity.

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