If charisma is a gift, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is clearly working with lumps of coal. His town hall on CNN last week confirmed it, but we had a pretty good sense already.
Back in February, NPR reported that Donald Trump was viewed twice as unfavorably among conservatives as DeSantis. When he launched his presidential campaign in May with Elon Musk’s help, the governor had money and momentum. Then voters met him. What followed hasn’t been pretty.
Staff layoffs. Shrinking funds. And all of those awkward attempts at retail politics.
My favorite remains him scolding a little girl for eating an Icee in the dead of summer. Something about it having a lot of sugar. A politician doing that in California would have been weird. Doing so in Iowa — a state known for its fried butter — shows he can’t read a room or a fairground.
Now with the Iowa caucuses a month away, and DeSantis 2024 in desperate need of a jolt, he is trying to read voters. And in this desperate hour he is betting that the good people of Iowa want to see him rant against transgender teens.