Here's how Ron DeSantis plans to attack Trump: Very carefully

W. James Antle III

March 03, 06:00 AM March 03, 06:00 AM

After months of taking slings and arrows from former President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) counteroffensive strategy is starting to take shape.

DeSantis has largely shrugged off increasingly personal attacks from Trump, who appears to regard the Florida governor’s apparent, yet still unannounced, interest in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination as an act of disloyalty. Trump frequently mentions his 2018 endorsement of DeSantis in the GOP gubernatorial primary.

As DeSantis drops the clearest hints yet that he will be getting into the race, however, subtle attempts to criticize and contrast himself with Trump have become noticeable.

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"I didn’t have a single leak in my administration,” DeSantis told WHD News. “You could have the best vision in the world, make the best decisions as the executive — if you don’t have people that will carry out that and implement it, then it’s not gonna amount to very much."

Whose administration might DeSantis be contrasting himself with?

The Trump White House leaked like a sieve. Officials jockeyed for position and a mercurial president’s favor. Frequent departures led to a high number of disgruntled former employees speaking to the press, sometimes on the record but often anonymously.

Trump also ignored the dictum that personnel is policy, hiring staffers and appointing high-level officials who disagreed with him on the issues. Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka were, as family members, his closest advisers. They were also essentially Democrats, centrists at best.

The discrepancy between Trump’s foreign policy and that of much of his national security team was illustrated by his appointment of John Bolton at a time when the administration sought to withdraw from Afghanistan and shrink the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East. Aside from DeSantis, the rest of the 2024 Republican presidential field may be dominated by people who worked for Trump, led by former Vice President Mike Pence.

But DeSantis was only complimentary of Trump in the interview.

“His endorsement was the big enchilada,” DeSantis said of winning Trump’s backing for governor, a regular bone of contention at Mar-a-Lago. “Our voters want to look at you, and they size you up, and they take this responsibility very, very seriously.”

DeSantis has also taken a page out of the playbook of an already declared Republican contender, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. He is using attack lines that overtly target President Joe Biden but also apply to Trump. One of the most obvious areas is age, as some Republicans clamor for a generational change in leadership.

“You know, don’t we need some more energy in the executive?” DeSantis told the Times of London. “Don’t we need a little bit more vigor and a little bit more punch?”

“I think people in Florida, I mean, we go very high-octane,” he added. “I bounce around to all corners of this state. And I think people respond to that.”

Biden is 80, DeSantis is 44. But Trump is 76. And this pitch also counterpunches against the Trump branding that helped doom the presidential ambitions of one of DeSantis’s predecessors as Florida governor: “low energy.”

But DeSantis doesn’t say the Trump part out loud. He emphasizes he is most interested in working against the agenda of Biden and the Democrats, not his fellow Republicans.

“Look, I have the responsibility to govern a state, and I’ve got to focus on delivering results,” DeSantis recently told the Washington Examiner. “I’ve also got to protect the people against Biden’s policies, and so when I’m getting in fights, I’m fighting Biden.”

“I think get it done, keep your eye on the ball, and just keep delivering results and fighting back against the Biden administration,” he added.

No direct mention of Trump, only Biden. But who doesn’t keep his eye on the ball, focus on delivering results, and make sure he only fights Biden rather than other Republicans? The former president, who goes after DeSantis by tying him to longtime Republican stalwarts such as Karl Rove, Jeb Bush, and former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).

A core argument of any DeSantis campaign is that it is possible to have Republican leadership that fights but better picks its battles — political combatants who are unafraid of Democrats and the media but more prudent, disciplined, and effective in hitting back.

Trump’s counterargument is that DeSantis is an imitation of the real thing and a vehicle for the GOP establishment to take back the party from the MAGA base while appropriating his "America First" rhetoric. Trump’s culture war is not your costume.

But that requires Trump to go after Republicans. It may have worked in 2016 against 16 GOP foes, but after a mostly disappointing midterm election, other than DeSantis’s 19-point landslide victory in what is generally considered a battleground state, this tactic might not have aged well.

Don’t expect DeSantis to respond in kind, making his likely campaign expressly anti-Trump. Not even when he is.