Things are starting to rock and roll in GOP land. It appears that Ron DeSantis has finally taken off the gloves and decided to take on the Great Orange One. That’s intriguing enough, but simultaneously, it looks like Freedom Caucus member Ken Buck has decided to jump off the Trumptanic and join DeSantis. Axios:

What happened: Last Friday, DeSantis told right-wing host Ben Shapiro that Trump had signed “basically a jailbreak bill” that “has allowed dangerous people out of prison who have now re-offended, and really, really hurt a number of people.”

  • DeSantis pledged that as president he would try to repeal the First Step Act of 2018, a bipartisan bill Trump signed that reduced some federal sentences considered excessive and sought to improve federal prisons.
  • Thousands of prisoners were made eligible for early release under the law but some of those released early have been arrested again for crimes, including murder.
  • Asked whether Trump still supports the bill or if there are any parts he would change, the Trump campaign did not respond.
  • Instead, Trump’s team issued a statement portraying DeSantis as a flip-flopper because, as a member of Congress, he voted for an earlier version of the bill that had significant differences from the final legislation.
  • “He sounds just like John Kerry. What a phony,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Axios.

Between the lines: DeSantis resigned his House seat before the final vote in December 2018. The bill he voted for seven months earlier did not include several changes Democrats managed to get into the final version.

  • In May 2018, 226 Republicans voted for the earlier version of the bill; only two voted against it.
  • On the final version of the bill, 34 Republicans changed their votes from from “yes” to “no.” While 57 Democrats voted against the bill in May, zero voted “no” in December.

And then what happened is Ken Buck told Axios that Trump’s attack was “not only disingenuous, it’s dishonest. They were completely two different bills.” Imagine that? Donald Trump being disingenuous or dishonest? Mercy, say it isn’t so.

In all events, this is a very different political landscape from what we saw even last week. If the Freedom Caucus starts dividing its loyalties, Trump may get totally spooked. Let’s see what happens. This is an intriguing development.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Ken Buck is awful – but he’s not the sheep that Boebert is, or Lamborn. He has actually worked with Bennet, and IIRC with Hickenlooper and Neguse. He seems to know he has constituents. So this doesn’t surprise me as much as if it were one of the other two.

  2. Out of the nasty, greasy caked with bits of Trump sh*t frying pan and into the DeSantis fueled with burning books with the flames fanned by hateful white supremacist rhetoric dumpster fire!

    10

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