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Message to GOPers: Words Are Not Actions
DeSantis wrote in a Wednesday post on X that “it is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel, much less praise Hezbollah terrorists as ‘very smart.'”
In a recent BDB post (who is on fire of late) crystallized a vague concept I had about the legacy GOP and their over-reliance on political debate as a substitute for achieving results. I mean that quite literally.
It doesn’t really matter what we do, it only matters what we say out loud, lest someone get the wrong ideas in their pretty little heads.
I have often read on these very pages on Ricochet and elsewhere, how Trump should be more careful about how he says things because the media and Democrats will pounce on the wrong interpretation.
This in itself is laughable because these people are entirely capable of making any statement into any absurd meaning they wish.
Further, the fear GOP candidates have of being misconstrued (usually with deliberate intent) turns their statements into mild pablum, full of platitudes and devoid of strength and impact.
This is why Romney lost, and why so many GOPers fail.
Then, these very same pols who have failed to gain higher office, or failed to keep their weasel-ly promises while serving in office, gleefully join the attacks on DJT for being insufficiently vague and nuanced in his speech.
The statement from Ron DeSantis is despicable and clearly desperate. But desperation should not mitigate the reprehensible conclusion that Trump is “attack(ing) Israel” by saying these words.
Apparently Trumps actions are to be completely ignored, and his latest ‘words’, badly misinterpreted, should define his entire being.
(This, by the way, dismisses the amazing accomplishments Trump made on behalf of Israel to include the bold action to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, the Abraham accords, and granting his Jewish son-in-law close advisory position and more)
As to the substance, or lack thereof, to the charge that referring to someone being “smart” is ‘praise’ well, I fail to see that logic, and it scares me if DeSantis actually believes we should never regard our mortal enemies as being smart, cunning or resilient. He wants to be Commander-in Chief?
On the second level, does DeSantis believe this absurd attack will help his chances?
That’s not very smart, Ron.
Published in General
Hey, last week Joe Biden gave Hamas advice for how to kill more Israelis.
It is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would say such a thing.
Trump’s comments are not any different from the observations many have made about how this was a well-planned, well-coordinated attack. (The implication of which is that not only did intelligence agencies fail, but that the planning and coordination almost surely came from somewhere outside Gaza.)
I thank you. I believe quite strongly that once the “right” sacrificed language to euphemism and superficially polite, the “right” willingly gave up the field. Language has meaning but past behaviour is a very good indicator of future behaviour. Accommodating on language hoping to appease has been a really stupid strategy. I also believe that people behave most tellingly at the extremes of their situation or circumstances: Grace under fire and all that.
Lest we forget, Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem when everyone in high places seemed to be saying this was impossible or that it would take years to accomplish. Trump is not an enemy of Israel. His language is not always precise (Crafty or cunning might be better words to describe Hamas.), but they are quite understandable to any honest English-speaking person.
I could see voting for desantis, despite the weird things he has had to say about Ukraine. I’m more interested in deeds than words.
Absolutely shocking that de Santis would say something negative about Trump, when Trump has done nothing but shower de Santis with lavish praise.
Perhaps the best example of this was Romney saying that he had “binders full of women” and it somehow became something totally different and supposedly made him look terrible to women. I suppose that not being a woman I don’t understand why that statement was offensive, but the lesson should be learned that it doesn’t matter who they are, or what they say, the media is going to spin it negatively while ignoring anything from the left.
What did he say? The meme? I thought he’d been pretty much avoiding saying anything offensive.
Am I detecting sarcasm here?
DeSantis can say negative things about Trump in the same vein Trump does if he thinks he can get away with it, but to use those words as evidence Trump is “attacking Israel” and praising Hezbolla is plain stupid – or he thinks we’re stupid.
I don’t recall Trump ever contorting other politicians positions, including DeSantis.
Besides, DeSantis took this challenge on willingly. Trump is the de facto incumbent and it’s a giant ‘tell’ who he’s fundamentally aligned with. I have zero respect for those cretins, and Ron’s understanding of the political zeitgeist is lacking.
Did he really think he could tread the needle running against Trump and ignoring the gross violations of our legal system while somehow expecting Trump voters to eventually rally around him?
I know, Biden is worse. That’s how these people operate. The worse Democrats are and the more our country slips into chaos, the better it is for their campaign slogans, with the bonus that they never have to actually do anything. But he’s got no chance and I think he knows it.
I guess people have different ideas of what constitutes a ‘low blow’. Calling someone a silly name isn’t on the same level as claiming your opponent is praising terrorists and attacking Israel.
Trump and his surrogates began this campaign by insinuating that DeSantis was in the pocket of George Soros and that Andrew Cuomo was a better governor on Covid “because he said nice things about me.”
No, he lost. (If I could figure out another way to emphasize that I would.) He is not the incumbent. He lost. He is no longer the president of the United States because he lost the election.
That election was stolen.
If you think Biden got more votes than Obama while Trump increased his total. You obviously don’t know what time it is.
I have been promised over and over again that “irrefutable” evidence was coming.
It’s coming, folks…. brace yourself… this is going to change EVERYTHING… and then – like clockwork – this:
It’s been two months since. Where are the “irrefutable and overwhelming” legal filings in Atlanta? While Marc Elias and his legal team were changing election procedures in 2020 in the name of Covid where was Trump? He wasn’t fighting them. Because the hard part of winning an election doesn’t come with TV cameras he was AWOL.
There’s a lot to like about DeSantis (and as much to be wary of as any Ivy League educated lawyer politician). But his strategy to compete with the primary front runner does not seem calculated to peel away the support he needs. To put it another way, this statement is dumb on many levels.
Trump lost. Just like McCain and Romney lost – because he did and said stupid things during the campaign.
The election was not stolen. There was no secret cabal stuffing fake ballots into the system in the middle of the night.
There *WAS* manipulation of the media and the voting rules. While the media is a lost cause, Trump could have taken advantage of the voting rule changes and had the Republicans harvesting ballots and encouraging early voting too.
Instead he not only lost the Presidency, he cost us multiple winnable Senate seats – his hand-picked candidate for Pennsylvania couldn’t beat an obviously brain-damaged Democrat, and then he actually encouraged Republicans to NOT VOTE in the Georgia runoffs. We have a Senate Democratic majority, and all the spending and bad policy that came from it, SOLELY because of Donald Trump.
He’s an incompetent loser. Move on.
Wrong.
This isn’t true. But it’s an article of faith among Trump haters.
I’m not a Trump hater. I voted for him twice.
It’s absolutely true.
The latter statement doesn’t negate the former.
Not according to NBC. If even NBC can admit the truth, why can’t you?
What he said. Trump distorted de Santis record on covid as well.
from CNN: (Whom I normally don’t look to for anything factual)
WashingtonCNN —
Former President Donald Trump made false claims about a variety of people and subjects, notably including Florida governor and Republican presidential primary rival Ron DeSantis, in an interview this week with conservative host Megyn Kelly.
Trump claimed that Florida under DeSantis “sort of had a mandate” on Covid-19 vaccines. In fact, DeSantis never imposed any kind of Covid-19 vaccine mandate. Defending himself against criticism from DeSantis, Trump claimed that he would not have given Dr. Anthony Fauci a presidential commendation and does not know who gave Fauci such a commendation. In fact, it was him, Donald Trump.
Trump claimed that, unlike DeSantis, the governors of Tennessee and South Carolina kept their states open throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, those governors imposed significant early restrictions, too. And Trump repeated a familiar but inaccurate story about how he supposedly came to endorse DeSantis for governor in 2018.
Now I have not listened to the Megyn Kelly interview for a while, but I have thought that Trump has been distorting de Santis’ record on Covid for quite some time. And that was also unnecessary and stupid, in my view.
You can call him desperate or whatever you want but his statement is still 100% correct.
I see you’re descending into “Just because you married a black woman doesn’t mean you’re not a racist” territory.
I fail to see the equivalence. A vote is not marriage.
What I’d like to know is what Trump said regarding Israel, that he was badmouthing Israel. What did he say?
I have no way of knowing whether the election was “stolen” especially since there are different definitions of theft in this case, but I highly suspect it was. I never took much time to drill down into the specific charges, but the excuses seemed pretty lame and the counter-charges weak ( conflating lack of standing with conclusions there was nothing there, etc)
But let’s just imagine there was zero ballot stuffing, and zero organized ‘rigging’…
Miffed White Male says:
Yes, there was. And it was significant.
Moreover, the unfair attacks from all quarters throughout his Presidency along with bogus assertions f from the 51 Intel “patriots” should have been enough to rally EVERY Republican around him for the sake of our Constitution.
DeSantis ignores this by his actions of running against him. It takes this egregious behavior off the table as though nothing happened, and further empowers the March to totalitarianism. It makes DeSantis and his supporters complicit. There’s no way around it. DeSantis cannot defend Trump on these issues without people wondering why he’s running, but on principle , which he seems to lack, he should. That’s what is needed now, Republicans standing up – not for Trump the man or the President – but for our very system of government and democracy.
The media being a “lost cause” is not a peripheral concern. It’s central, and must be a primary target of any Republican candidacy.
Yet they, DeSantis and company, will be dancing dogs for NBC soon and pretending these people are legitimate journalists and begging for treats just like they did with Fox. The interlocutors will be very polite and dignified and then lie about whichever candidate is the biggest threat, if/when Trump is gone.
At this point, I don’t believe any Republican (or Democrat) can win without the express permission and support of the deep state. (The ‘deep state’ is the Intel/media cabal btw)
My ideal scenario ( won’t happen) is Trump selects Tulsi Gabbard as VP then resigns after his first day in office. That could bring the country together and begin to defang the domestic influence of the deep state.
But anyone currently running but Trump will perpetuate the same problems, and no Republican other than Trump has any hope of winning anyway . So prepare for another 4- 8 years of more of the same comrades!
DeSantis is a smarter, more competent version of Trump. I don’t understand why any Trump supporter has an issue with him.
He said some vaguely unkind things about Bibi, not Israel. Netenahu is not super-popular in Israel. It’s a giant stretch.
Maybe Ron thinks being “smart” is some kind of virtue and therefore it’s praise.
I don’t, and I wish he was doing better in the polls. I have not been polled. So it looks right now like Trump will win the nomination.
And I will vote for him.
Of course the bigger problem there is that general Repulican/conservative people aren’t inclined to do things that Democrats are eager to do. Such as harvest ballots, or kill their unborn children…
I said “de facto incumbent”.
What I mean is that the election wasn’t fair. Whether it was stolen or not we will never know. You don’t know, and neither do I.
I suspect it was. Regardless, there was manipulation, organized propaganda and lies from our government and censorship also from our government! That much we know for a fact, and that’s enough for me.
DeSantis is running against Trump as though none of this ever happened.
Personally, I’m sick of Trump, the man I don’t hate him, I have some sympathy for him, but he’s running and the only way this all can be made right ( sorta) is for him to win again.
It’s far more possible than any other GOP candidate. …He will win the nomination anyway.
Since Trump did not lose supporters he should have understood that this was NOT the time to jump in ( if only for his own sake), since these factors trump everything else in my opinion.
Speaking as one who has supported both for their respective offices, I think that DeSantis’ run for President was ill-advised and will possibly hamper his chances should he run again in the next cycle. My opinion has long been that the GOP donor class wanted to pit DeSantis against Trump for their own benefit and not because they thought he could realistically win.
DeSantis’ best shot at becoming an effective President was to finish out his second Term and run in 4 years. He would’ve had the full support of Trump and the conservative base. Instead the usual adviser and donor classes convinced him to run in this cycle and ruined a lot of that good will. He will be more beholden to them should he want to run again in 4 years. This is the same thing that happened with the Tea Party, young conservative firebrands try to make a positive change but are quickly caught up in the business of politics as usual.
That’s my speculative take on the matter, but it’s just one argument that can be made for supporting Trump over DeSantis in this cycle.
From the WSJ Oct 12: “Former President Donald Trump is facing criticism from Democrats and Republicans for remarks in a campaign speech in which he characterized the militant group Hezbollah as “very smart” and faulted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a 2020 mission that killed an Iranian military leader.” … “In the speech, Trump boasted of his efforts to support Israel. But he also criticized Netanyahu, saying the Israeli leader “let us down” in a U.S. mission that killed Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.”
As per usual, it was Trump being Trump. Trump is a firm supporter of Israel, and I agree that actions speak louder than words, but to be critical at that point was ill-timed. So the remarks were fair game for political opponents, in my opinion.