Ron DeSantis has not but introduced he’ll run for president, however primarily based on the cheap assumption that he’ll, there’s one large query that retains developing round his odds of constructing it to the White Home: Will voters take to a man who has the appeal of a protein bar? Donald Trump and his allies are attempting their highest to verify the reply is a convincing “No.”
Politico’s Meridith McGraw studies that as a part of its quest to wreck DeSantis going into the primaries, Group Trump plans to spotlight the “character issue” or, within the case of the governor of Florida, the dearth thereof. In line with the outlet, sources near the ex-president say DeSantis “could be awkward and mechanical in public, and notice he has largely averted the press.” And, to be truthful, they’re not the one ones who’ve observed this. In January, reporter Jonathan Martin wrote that “the early rap on DeSantis from his fellow Republicans is that, for all his smarts and shrewdness, he lacks appeal, and is both unwilling or unable to undergo the longstanding rituals of retail politics,” with donors noting his obvious incapability for “forging connections with folks.” The identical month, New York Journal’s Ed Kilgore questioned if DeSantis can “compete with Donald Trump’s sinister charisma.” And in an enormous profile of the Florida governor printed in September, my colleague Gabriel Sherman summed up DeSantis’s “political future” as hinging on the query: “Can he lead the Trump cult of character with no character?”
After all, the difficulty with DeSantis’s lack of charisma or appeal is that he’s not simply a blob in a boxy swimsuit; he’s additionally a jerk. As Sherman reported final fall:
