Wednesday, March 16, 2022

‘We Want People That Are Going to Fight the Left,’ Says the Man Out-Trumping Trump

Damon Winter/The New York Times

GUEST ESSAY : OPINION

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, is giving Donald Trump a run for his money as the most divisive politician in America. “We want people that are going to fight the left, and that’s what we need to do in this country,” DeSantis declared in an interview with Fox News on Feb. 8. “That’s what we’re doing in Florida, standing up for people’s freedoms. We’re opposing wokeness. We’re opposing all these things.”

In a Nov. 5, 2021, article on the liberal Daily Beast website, “Desperate, Deranged DeSantis Devolves Into Dumb Troll,” Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote that DeSantis “is a terrible governor who is failing his leadership course with flying colors. Driven only by politics and naked ambition, he pursues reckless policies that divide Floridians and may even put them in danger.”

The governor routinely succumbs to right-wing pressure groups, Navarrette continued, “because he apparently has no core beliefs other than the unshakable conviction that he should sit in the Oval Office.” » | Thomas B. Edsall | Wednesday, March 16, 2022