Ron DeSantis hasn’t yet announced his probably inevitable presidential campaign, but he has started doing one thing: returning fire against his probably primary rival, Donald Trump (who’s killing him in the polls). It’s just baby steps so far, nothing too mean or, for Trump, anger-making. He didn’t even have too many mean things to say about one of Trump’s mature nicknames for him, treating it only to some beneath him jokes.
ooooooooh pic.twitter.com/4ShmQXrqxe
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 22, 2023
On Thursday Piers Morgan will run his full sit-down with the Florida governor, but he started dropping teases on Tuesday. One was a brief clip of Morgan asking him about “Ron DeSanctimonious” and “Meatball Ron.” DeSantis laughed them off, but only addressed the one that’s less mean (and also bad).
“I don’t know how to spell the sanctimonious one,” joked DeSantis. “I don’t really know what it means, but I kinda like it, it’s long, it’s got a lot of vowels. We’ll go with that, that’s fine. I mean you can call me whatever you want, just as long as you also call me a winner.”
Of course DeSantis knows how to spell “sanctimonious.” He went to Yale and Harvard. But he’s trying to win over Trump’s base, so he’s gotta dumb it down.
Transcripts from the interview were also published in The New York Post, in which DeSantis once again will neither confirm nor deny whether he’s running, possibly because he just got re-elected as governor. He also got in a customary dig at Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom he said he would have “fired” because “he got way too big for his britches, and I think he did a lot of damage.” There was also some woke talk, though like most people who use that word, he has yet to even adequately define what it means.
(Via The Daily Beast)