RON DESANTIS: THE MAKING AND REMAKING (AND REMAKING) OF A MAGA HEIR

[brooklynite]

Vanity Fair

On the afternoon of August 19, several hundred conservative activists streamed into the ballroom at the Wyndham Grand hotel in downtown Pittsburgh. The grassroots event was billed as a “Unite and Win” rally for Doug Mastriano, the Donald Trump–backed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate who was campaigning on Trump’s big lie, that Democrats stole the 2020 election. But Mastriano was only the warm-up act for the headliner, who had drawn me and members of the national press corps to Pennsylvania: Ron DeSantis.

The first-term Florida governor strutted onstage in a boxy suit and red tie, flinging white “Ron DeSantis” baseball caps into the sea of unmasked faces. The sound system blasted “Sweet Florida,” a country tribute anthem the Lynyrd Skynyrd–adjacent band Van Zant wrote for him. The music wrapped and the crowd quieted. DeSantis gripped the lectern. He offered cursory praise for Mastriano and then uncorked a grievance-fueled stump speech that sounded like it had been written by AI plugged into Fox News. In DeSantis’s telling, the honest people of Florida were besieged by a vast array of liberal scourges: big tech, IRS agents, George Soros, the Biden administration, the corporate media, illegal immigrants, Anthony Fauci, police defunders, Disney, China, communism, cancel culture, critical race theory, and woke gender ideology. Only Ron DeSantis was brave enough to confront these malign forces.

DeSantis’s appearance in the Keystone State made headlines not for what he said but for what he didn’t: anything nice about Donald Trump. The omission was one of the many signs that the 44-year-old is preparing a run for president in 2024. In February, Rupert Murdoch–owned HarperCollins signed DeSantis to a lucrative book deal, which the governor could use to publish his national platform next year. This summer, DeSantis campaigned for candidates in two more key swing states—Arizona and Ohio—and has amassed a sizable war chest. According to disclosures, DeSantis has raised a record-breaking $172 million since August 2019. His Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist, has raised just $15.3 million. DeSantis has burnished his national profile by granting frequent interviews to Fox News. According to the liberal watchdog group Media Matters, DeSantis made more than 200 appearances since 2017 on the network. “Ron has done a fantastic job courting Fox talent. It’s a big deal to him,” a former DeSantis adviser told me. The mainstream media gets no such love. The organizers of DeSantis’s Pennsylvania speech required reporters to submit clips of previous articles ostensibly to vet them, though this took on a more authoritarian tone given the two candidates’ open wars with the mainstream press.

Of course, any path to the 2024 GOP nomination almost certainly runs through Trump. According to two sources briefed on Trump’s plans, the former president considered announcing he was running over the July Fourth holiday but decided to wait. According to a source, Trump told advisers he worried he could be damaged politically if Republicans underperform in the midterms. “He’d rather blame Mitch McConnell for a loss than himself,” a Republican briefed on Trump’s thinking told me. Discussions in Trumpworld about a campaign announcement were active as this article went to press. Which means the DeSantis-Trump rivalry will remain the most closely watched story line in Republican politics heading into the 2024 GOP primary. In July, a New York Times/Siena College poll found more than half of GOP voters would vote for someone other than Trump in 2024. A University of North Florida poll conducted from August 8 through August 12 showed DeSantis beating Trump in a 2024 primary 47 percent to 45 percent.

[underpants]

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