Trump’s Covid Attack On DeSantis Will Backfire Spectacularly

Donald Trump just fired the first salvo of the 2024 Republican primary against the man expected to be his top rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In a blistering statement, he went after DeSantis on a number of fronts — returning to the moniker “Ron DeSanctimonious” and portraying him as desperately headed for defeat in 2018 before Trump backed him. But one part of his argument — his criticism of DeSantis’s handling of Covid — is likely to backfire spectacularly.

Trump said DeSantis was an “average Republican governor with great public relations, who didn’t have to close up his state, but did, unlike other Republican governors.”

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Philip Klein

Philip Klein is the editor of National Review Online.

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Donald Trump just fired the first salvo of the 2024 Republican primary against the man expected to be his top rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In a blistering statement, he went after DeSantis on a number of fronts — returning to the moniker “Ron DeSanctimonious” and portraying him as desperately headed for defeat in 2018 before Trump backed him. But one part of his argument — his criticism of DeSantis’s handling of Covid — is likely to backfire spectacularly.

Trump said DeSantis was an “average Republican governor with great public relations, who didn’t have to close up his state, but did, unlike other Republican governors.”