Last month, as the case against him over classified documents ramped up — and after he basically confessed to the crowd — something unusual happened to Donald Trump: He began slipping in the polls. Some of them, reflecting certain key states, even showed him getting narrowly beaten by his closest challenger, “Meatball” Ron DeSantis. But the Florida governor is still hurting in most polls, and his team is finally admitting that he’s getting his butt kicked.
“Right now in national polling we are way behind, I’ll be the first to admit that,” said DeSantis spokesperson Steve Cortes during a Twitter spaces event, as per Politico. “I believe in being blunt and honest. It’s an uphill battle but clearly Donald Trump is the runaway frontrunner.”
Cortes, who worked on the Trump campaign in 2016 and 2020 before decamping for DeSantis, tried to spin the news, calling them the “clear underdog.” But he couldn’t help but be gloomy: “In the first four states which matter tremendously, polls are a lot tighter, we are still clearly down. We’re down double digits, we have work to do.”
There was a bit more spin to come. “If we do not prevail — and I have every intent on winning, I didn’t sign up for this to come in second — but if we do not prevail I will tell you this,” Cortes said, “we will make President Trump better for having this kind of primary.”
Of course, DeSantis has been hammering at Trump, which isn’t exactly making him stronger — or at least in theory. Trump definitely looks like the better one after the bizarrely homophobic (yet homoerotic) ad the team put out on Friday. Perhaps DeSantis would poll better if he had a nicer — which is to say completely different — personality.
(Via Politico)