MIAMI — Former President Donald Trump continues to be the favorite to be the Republican nominee to stand up to Democratic President Joe Biden, who aspires to the presidential re-election, very distant from Trump is the governor Ron DeSantis, by more than 30 points, who has changed tack by tweaking his speech in the past week in an attempt to win over his party’s voters to clinch the nomination.
DeSantis, who has raised some 130 million dollars, has seen his campaign recede compared to Trump, perhaps for this reason “a change of strategy” has been considered, according to the opinion of the Republican political analyst, Anthony Verdugo.
Interviewed by NBC News about whether Trump had lost to Biden in the 2020 presidential election, DeSantis, who had been evasive on the subject for two years, responded: “Of course he lost. Of course. Joe Biden is the president,” he said.
Despite the cascading lawsuits against him promoted by the administration of President Joe Biden, Trump has not stopped campaigning to return to the White House. The former president has been charged in three criminal cases and a new criminal indictment also seems imminent in Georgia, which investigates whether he illegally tried to change the result of the 2020 elections in this southern state. Trump also faces two other civil lawsuits.
However, his popularity among his bases has not affected one iota. The latest Siena College and New York Times poll of likely primary voters showed Trump crushing Gov. Ron DeSantis by 37 points.
The governor of Florida warned that, if this scenario continues, the Republicans will lose in 2024 if they do not abandon the former president, cornered by court cases.
DeSantis’ change in rhetoric comes as he seeks to renew his stagnant 2024 White House campaign. How Republicans will see this change in discourse is the question many are asking after the publication of the interview with the governor on NBC .
why the change
Anthony Verdugo, a Republican political analyst, explained why DeSantis’ change, according to his point of view.
“Number one, the governor sees himself at a 30-point disadvantage, and what he’s doing is trying to move and trying to differentiate himself from Trump, and the only way he can do that is to disagree with the candidate without attacking personally and he thinks that It is the strategy not to anger the Trump base, whose votes he needs.
For the expert, DeSantis seeks to sell to the Republicans the idea that he has criteria, presents his own proposals to the Americans and that he “respectfully” disagrees with Trump, without offending voters who are related to the former president.
DeSantis’ message to the Republican base is that “we have to look to the future and not look back, and that is the strategy he is using now and the reality is that since he is 30 points below Trump, he has nothing to lose,” said Verdugo.
On whether the strategy that DeSantis promotes is viable, Verdugo replied: “It is the only card he can play now, he has no other because he is going to stand in that debate as the governor of Florida and candidate for president of the United States , he is going to have to talk about the issues that are affecting the country, including the accusations against Trump, and the 2020 elections. So, he must already have prepared what he is going to say. He is moving away from Trump, but not from the base, ”he stressed.
why two years later
The reason it took him two years to say so, explains the analyst, is because “now is the time that he is running for the presidency. As governor, he did not have to disagree, but now he is competing to be the nominee for the Republican party and for that reason he is doing it in the strong season of the elections, which begins with the debate on August 23, ”he pointed out. he.
Could Trump make it to Election Day?
Executioner agrees with former President Trump’s speech, assuring that there is a strategy of electoral interference promoted by the Democrats.
“The way they are interfering with the elections is that they want all the trials to be in 2024, the year of the elections: New York in March, Florida in May, and we will see Washington and Georgia, and what they want to do is get him out of the picture. campaign”, although he assures that the Trump team has contemplated this scenario and in the trials the ex-president will be in front of a microphone, he asserted to add that the attention of the Americans will be on Trump.
“The advantage of former President Trump is that everyone already knows him, and the other is that he has a platform. These trials are going to focus, not on the candidates in the primaries, and if it were to reach the general, the focus will be on Trump, with the trials against him; even Biden may not be attracting attention and what I think these trials are going to highlight is that there are two systems of Justice: One, for the Clintons and the Bidens; and the other for the rest. For five years they investigated Hunter Biden and nothing has happened; However, former President Trump has already been arrested three times in the last few months, ”he said, a fact that is not invisible to Americans.
And it is that from the perception of a majority of Americans, justice is being used as a political tool against Trump, because it is not applied in the same way with Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, for alleged corruption, a case that federal agencies have helped to keep hidden for some time so as not to affect Biden in the elections.
Asked if he thinks Trump will have a chance to run in the general election, he said the former president’s lawyers will work to file motions and postpone trials until after the election. “They are going to do it in Florida, in Washington and in New York, so that Trump can go out and speak to the voters and campaign.”
