Trump Fighting DeSantis, Not Reasoning with Us

If you want to lay out all the words Donald Trump said about Ron DeSantis this week, and diagram the arguments, like a pencil-neck who reads — or worse, writes for — National Review, well, you’re wasting your time. B doesn’t follow A, and C and D aren’t premises; they’re just the first letters of two different four-letter words. The weapons are in the English language, but this is not a rule-bound duel of reasoning, like an Oxford debate. It’s a dirty brawl. There’s a difference, and if you don’t get that by now, you’re going to misunderstand everything from here on out.

So, no — it doesn’t actually matter that one day Donald Trump is begging DeSantis to say something on the impending charges from Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, putting DeSantis in the role of protector, only the next day to turn around and try to recast him as an ingrate. And no, it doesn’t matter that in one breath Donald Trump says Florida is great but only because of the sun and the ocean. And in the next breath he portrays it as a “sh**hole country” that DeSantis has run into the ground. And it’s not supposed to make any sense when he blames DeSantis for closing the beaches and calls him Lockdown Ron, only to then blame DeSantis for Covid deaths.

About the Author

Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

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If you want to lay out all the words Donald Trump said about Ron DeSantis this week, and diagram the arguments, like a pencil-neck who reads — or worse, writes for — National Review, well, you’re wasting your time. B doesn’t follow A, and C and D aren’t premises; they’re just the first letters of two different four-letter words. The weapons are in the English language, but this is not a rule-bound duel of reasoning, like an Oxford debate. It’s a dirty brawl. There’s a difference, and if you don’t get that by now, you’re going to misunderstand everything from here on out.

So, no — it doesn’t actually matter that one day Donald Trump is begging DeSantis to say something on the impending charges from Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, putting DeSantis in the role of protector, only the next day to turn around and try to recast him as an ingrate. And no, it doesn’t matter that in one breath Donald Trump says Florida is great but only because of the sun and the ocean. And in the next breath he portrays it as a “sh**hole country” that DeSantis has run into the ground. And it’s not supposed to make any sense when he blames DeSantis for closing the beaches and calls him Lockdown Ron, only to then blame DeSantis for Covid deaths.