Trump vs. Desantis: The Tale of the Tape
"Let's get ready to rumble!"
Tale of the tape: This idiom is used when comparing things, especially in sports; it comes from boxing where the fighters would be measured with a tape measure before a fight. Or maybe their clash is more like Mortal Kombat’s theme song.
Surprising no one, Ron DeSantis has announced that he is running for president (to an inauspicious start). Compromised WEF ally Elon Musk served as hype-man to try to pump him up. Meanwhile, the establishment has scheduled their show trial of Trump based on a “novel legal theory” to interfere with the Republican presidential primaries, with a trial date of March 25, 2024.
Many on the right have chosen their team, “Team Orange Man” or “Team Meatball”, but while “our side” vs “their side” is good for a football match, there is no Savior figure coming to save you and what matters is whether a politician advances a pro-middle class, anti-establishment agenda or not; whether their agenda lines up with yours and to what extent, and the more that can be analyzed and quantified the better. Additionally, beware the snake in the grass; a politician who espouses platitudes of friendship and then knifes you in the back (exemplified by Mitch McConnell and his crew of 15 “Decepticon” RINO Senators, according to Sundance, who vote in lockstep with his establishment orders) is a much bigger problem than identified liberal opponents, because the backstabbers muddy the waters surrounding ideology, alliances and friendships, and often pounce at the most inopportune moments (Jeff Sessions, I’m looking at you). Fighting an enemy you don’t see is much harder than fighting one you do, and that’s why holding the right’s feet to the fire and criticizing them for weakness, opportunism, and short-sightedness is entirely appropriate. Anyway, liberals are pretty boring, stamped with the mark of NPC or sociopathic liberals, both types anti-white and pro-establishment, and have very little interesting personal qualities to them. Focusing on ignoring right-wing allies’ flaws in order to “own the libs” is not a strategy that is, has or will work due to an extremely muddled ideology and vision of the current right.
I thought it would make for a decent post to judge Trump and DeSantis based on certain specific criteria from a 1 to 10 scale, with a 10 being excellent for dissidents and a 1 being the worst. These criteria include:
Independence from large donors,
The degree of policy effectualization (i.e. how effective are they at getting policies passed through the legislative branch),
The quality of their personnel choices,
The quality of their political allies,
The emphasis they place on loyalty, both from and to others,
The level of establishment opposition/expectation of vote rigging against each candidate,
Each candidate’s physiognomy,
Each candidate’s vision and
Each candidate’s symbolism.
Actions matter much more than words, so I will, where possible, highlight those, but may make use of words in areas where action is lacking.
For transparency, I supported Trump in the 2015 primaries and voted for him both in 2016 and (reluctantly) in 2020; I do not defend or concentrate on Biden at all in this analysis; he wears an earpiece which tells him what to say and basically wanders around drugged up with dementia otherwise, directed by his “I’m really a Doctor” wife/nurse. He’s barely alive and a total puppet. And even though I am vigorously hard on both Trump and DeSantis below, I still think Trump is the first quasi-populist (as opposed to full globalist1) in our lifetimes, and that alone makes him better than every president (which is a very, very low bar) since possibly Andrew Jackson (who was not a perfect man by any stretch, but his abolition of the Rothschild sponsored Second Bank of the United States was a God-tier move), and DeSantis is doing a solid job as governor of Florida. I don’t intend to take away from either of their accomplishments.
That being said, the energy spent on the 2024 nominee, regardless of whether one or both are great or terrible candidates, is almost certainly an exercise in futility because of (1) the upcoming bogus criminal trial(s) against Trump to try to knock him out of the race, (2) the establishment’s certain rigging of the 2024 elections just like 2020, and (3) the grim financial (and otherwise) situation of America:
America’s financial situation is metastatic, and it seems impossible to imagine a politician figuring out a way out of this problem without divine intervention.
Okay, let’s jump into the analysis.
#1: Independence from Large Donors
Independence from large donors matters because large donors are universally pro-globohomo due to the financial and reputational shackles that come with great wealth; if they consciously buck the system they will be targeted and stripped of their fortune (which is why Trump’s net-worth has been cut in half and why Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, despite some possible populist sympathies, won’t cross red lines).
Trump has a net-worth of $2.5 billion in 2023 according to Forbes, down from $4.5 billion in 2016. His wealth allowed him to self-fund most of his 2016 election, and he took in a large amount from small donors, although he apparently didn’t spend a penny toward his 2020 re-election bid, taking $75 million from Sheldon Adelson alone. Analysts were correct that Trump wasn’t rich enough to truly self-finance, unlike unpopular pro-establishment elitists like Michael Bloomberg who has a net-worth of $94 billion. However, big money donors are apparently staying away from Trump thus far for his 2024 run, and he’s been busy conducting highly embarrassing shakedowns of his hardcore followers:
Therefore it seems like Trump wasn’t dependent on large donors in 2016, became highly dependent on them in 2020, and it’s up in the air the extent of his dependence in 2024.
DeSantis has a net-worth of $320,000 at the end of 2021, which means he is by default beholden to large donors (unless he receives a groundswell of small donor support, which hasn’t happened so far). Seven figure checks are rolling in and they all have strings attached. One mega-donor, the head of Citadel Investments Ken Griffin, bragged about how he purchased DeSantis in order to crush populism. This explains why, for example, DeSantis originally took a populist position and called the Russia/Ukraine war a territorial dispute that perhaps America should stay out of, then reversed himself a week later and branded Putin a “war criminal” who should be "held accountable". Uh, thanks for the encouragement for global nuclear war, Ron.
Trump earns a 4 on independence from large donors and DeSantis is a 0. Advantage: Trump.
#2: Policy effectualization
When Trump became president in 2017, Republicans controlled the House and the Senate (with very small margins). Having written “The Art of the Deal”, he should have understood that the greatest leverage a president has is right at the start of his presidency when he has the greatest momentum where he sets the ground rules for the rest of his term. Instead of pushing for controversial items upfront like funding for the Wall or an immediate DACA repeal, he gave in to Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan’s demands — both of whom hated Trump with a white-hot passion — and gave in to support tax cuts for the ultra-rich and then a weak attempt at Obamacare repeal which failed. After McConnell and Ryan got the tax cuts they wanted, they refused to play ball to cooperate on border funding, on allowing Trump to appoint judges via recess appointments, or anything else. Detained migrants on the border even stayed at the same level they were at under Obama:
Trump got played.
Furthermore, Trump’s executive orders were overturned by judges — a district court judge in Hawaii issuing a nationwide injunction on Trump’s “Muslim Ban”, and other courts stepping in to prevent Trump from overturning Obama’s DACA executive order with his own executive order (!!), which weren’t his fault. But Trump got completely outplayed on the COVID shutdowns, which ultimately ushered in permanent fraudulent vote by mail (also see here and here) overseen by a new Democrat pro-fraud postal service tsar, while increasing the deficit to over $3 trillion in 2020. Ouch.
Now, Trump did withdraw from the awful Trans-Pacific Partnership, and did get a weak, watered down NAFTA reform passed, but it failed in its purpose of shrinking trade deficits and the trade deficit with China and overall actually increased. Trump also managed to keep us out of new wars which is very appreciated (although he symbolically bombed Syria over an establishment false-flag fake chemical attack), and he set the stage for the Afghanistan withdrawal.
DeSantis’s policy effecutalizations, on the other hand, are significantly better than Trump’s - at least on the surface. First, it’s a question of how effective DeSantis himself is versus riding the coattails of the Florida Senate, which in 2022 is lopsidedly Republican - 28 Republican seats vs. 12 Democrat seats - and the Florida House, which in 2022 is also lopsidedly Republican - 84 vs. 35 seats. DeSantis also benefitted strongly from Rick Scott firing the ultra-corrupt, pro-fraud Broward county elections supervisor Brenda Snipes, who had done her best to swing elections toward Democrats. Would Trump have been more effective if he had such a lopsided Republican legislature behind him? Would DeSantis have had much worse results pushing policies if he somehow becomes president with razor thin legislature majorities like Trump?
Second, let’s look at the publicly championed accomplishments of DeSantis in Florida: (1) the ban on childhood homosexual/transsexual grooming in public schools, (2) the ban on COVID vaccine mandates even during the days of COVID hysteria, (3) the battle with Disney over their special district, and (4) his attempts to turn Florida into a bastion of “freedom”.
The “Don’t Say Gay” bill (HB 1557) passed the Florida legislature and was signed into law by DeSantis. It prevented childhood grooming into homosexuality and transsexualism via in-class sex-ed discussions, and it received a tremendous amount of media attention — but the prohibition was only up through third grade; as soon as a child hit fourth grade it was legal to groom them. That really limited the benefits of the purported law. However, my criticism is minimal now that they just passed in May 2023 HB 1069 which extends those protections up to grade 5 and somewhat through 6-12.
Regarding the ban on COVID vaccine mandates in Florida, this was only with respect to public sector workers; private sector workers could still be subject to corporate vaccine mandates, although they had access to personal and religious exemptions (which corporations could be very tight about granting).
The Florida legislature reorganized Disney’s Reedy Creek special status (which is going to be litigated) in the wake of Disney demanding that child sex grooming remain legal in Florida.2 This issue remains ongoing and outcome is uncertain.
Florida passed a law that made it illegal for social media companies to ban right-wing candidates, but it has been blocked by a federal appeals court. DeSantis also supported a law to ban CBDCs in Florida (which I don’t think will have much if any legal effect), and mandates e-verify for employers. On the other hand, Florida passed a law that criminalizes free speech with respect to “hate speech”, surely on behalf of DeSantis’s Jewish megadonors (a consistent theme, as he has publicly punished anti-Israel companies in the past), which is a very fast slippery slope to the complete evisceration of the First Amendment. Banning “hate speech” is banning free speech - period. As Thomas Sowell said, "Freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once or openly, it is far more likely eroded away bit-by-bit amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals. Thus hard-earned freedoms for which many have fought and died have now been bought and sold for words or money, or both.” And as Michael Malice said, "The claim 'hate speech is not free speech' implies 'free' is a type of speech, as opposed to how speech is treated in a free society.”
Overall DeSantis has been much more effective than Trump in passing legislation, but it’s debatable how much of that is due to the difference in majorities between the Florida legislatures and the federal legislatures. DeSantis’s laws have been mixed in terms of their reach and intent, and it’s unclear how much of it is a cynical attempt to bolster DeSantis’s “populist” accomplishments to pry away Trump voters before turning the screw on them if he wins (which is Zman’s perspective).
Regardless, Trump earns a 2 on policy effectualization (it would be 0 except for his anti-war actions and withdrawal from TPP) and DeSantis earns a 6.5. Advantage: DeSantis.
#3: Personnel choices
Trump came from a business background and had a supreme power of positive thinking; he believed that he can convince anyone to be his friend and ally, to work together, which had been his experience previously in dealing with New York real estate politics, but it didn’t translate well to national politics and he ended up hiring a lot of “never Trumpers” who tried to undermine him at every turn. He did have beginner’s luck: His 2015-2016 campaign manager choices were sublime; he had rough-and-tumble Corey Lewandowski early on to shepherd him through the primary, then pivoted to dirty-tricks Paul Manafort to help him during the Republican Convention, whose establishment members wanted to screw him over at the 11th hour and replace him with either Lyin’ Ted or a Mike Pence/Paul Ryan combo (deep-statist Pence was ultimately forced on Trump as his vice president by Ryan, who otherwise threatened to change the convention rules to prevent him from winning3; the Cleveland deal may also have involved Ryan’s ability to choose Trump’s cabinet members) and then pivoted to Steve Bannon to go full populist during the general election. Each one of those played to the needs of the moment, and the switches occurred exactly when they were most needed. Masterful.
However, Trump’s personnel choices as soon as he won were, with respect to the policy positions he ran on, quite poor. He essentially let Jared Kushner and Goldman Sachs (via Gary Cohn, who illegally stole documents from Trump’s desk, and Steve Mnuchin) run much of his presidency; Steve Bannon who was the soul of Trump’s general election campaign was fired very quickly; Jeff Sessions turned out to be a traitor, William Barr was an extreme deep-statist and close personal friends with Robert Mueller (Barr also vigorously defended the sniper that killed Vicki Weaver, defenseless and holding a baby, at Ruby Ridge, and his father gave Jeffrey Epstein his first job); he had John Kelly in Homeland Security, who hated Trump and tried to undermine him; he hired never-Trumper Nikki Haley to be U.N. representative; he even hired insane arch-neocon John Bolton to be National Security Advisor for awhile. To be fair, cabinet-level positions required Senate approval and so it would have been difficult or impossible to appoint really great people given deep-state McConnell’s control of the Senate, but still, at the very least the National Security Advisor did not require Senate approval when he hired Bolton and he didn’t have to let Kushner edge out Bannon.
Trump’s poor personnel choices are easily seen in the day-to-day of the first couple months of his presidency, with the beat-by-beat are recorded as follows:
Regarding DeSantis, due to his lack of financial independence it seems unlikely that he would be surrounded by anyone other than warmed over Jeb-tier neoconservative figures with a window-dressing of fake populism.
Trump earns a 3 for personnel choices and DeSantis a pessimistic unknown. Advantage: Neither.
#4: Quality of political allies
Trump had very little political allies within congress or government, perhaps just the Tea Party contingent and the Freedom Caucus (which has a lot of overlap); to be a permanent part of the D.C. apparatus requires a globalist outlook, and Trump was elected on a populist anti-government protest vote. During elections he wavered between endorsing and supporting establishment candidates to have better chances of being perceived as having a “winning brand”, or endorsing and supporting more populist candidates who due to funding and media deficiencies and lack of other support had lower (perceived) chances of winning. It was a hard position to be in and reflected his internal split between wanting a return to the Reagan past and his instincts that such a return wasn’t possible (to be discussed in #8).
On the other hand, DeSantis is a kind of Jeb Bush/Ted Cruz hybrid and his allies are establishment allies. Endorsers include Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, Meghan McCain and Ben Shapiro. National Review speaks glowingly of him.
Trump earns a 3 for his ability to build meaningful populist alliances and DeSantis scores a 3 for having a greater ability to build alliances than Trump but which are of questionable quality. Score: tie.
#5: The emphasis placed on loyalty
This is just a dig a Trump, who selectively demands loyalty from his followers, insisting that support for him is a cult of personality and not tied to specific policy goals, while ignoring regular betrayal from figures such as Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, John Kelly, and others. He didn’t stand by General Flynn who was set up and fired by globohomo deep snake Mike Pence and the FBI. His own campaign staff were blocked from positions in the administration in 2017 after never-Trumper Johnny de Stefano was put in charge of hiring. He failed to pardon Julian Assange, whose leaks about the deep state secured Trump the presidency in 2016. He also failed to pardon his 1/6 supporters or Charlottesville supporters who were being set up and politically persecuted. While he had run on a get-tough-on-crime political platform, he turned around and let out a tremendous number of criminals in a failed bid to pander for the black vote (uh, good one Jared!). He apparently sold pardons for $2 million a pop through Kushner and pardoned undeserving criminals.
Trump even issued commendations to Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx for their “contributions” to Operation Warp Speed on his final day in office, despite Fauci completely butchering and making a mockery of science in the name of ultra-liberal, pro-establishment politics.
Politics is all about rewarding one’s friends and punishing one’s enemies; but Trump basically has an inverted version of the famous Sulla quote, which was “No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.” For Trump it was more “No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, who I have repaid.”
DeSantis’s stance on loyalty to allies in unknown.
Trump earns a 0 and DeSantis an unknown. Advantage: DeSantis.
#6: The level of establishment opposition and expectation of vote rigging
Well, this is an easy one. The establishment hates Trump and has set up nonsensical criminal prosecutions of him; they in-your-face rigged the 2020 election with the 3am vote stoppages for 4 hours while they stuffed ballots and then bragged about how they “fortified” the election. Trump’s unpredictability, his penchant for off-the-cusp truth-telling and the lack of FBI/Mossad legitimate blackmail on him makes him a loose cannon who discredits the entire system, regardless of his toothlessness in carrying out much or any of his agenda. The level of establishment opposition to Trump is a 10 and expectations of vote rigging against him are also a 10. DeSantis is much more acceptable to the establishment, although it’s not really clear how much they would rig the election against him (rigging the election against a candidate is positive in this context as it demonstrates deep state fear of someone representing non-approved, alternative values).
Trump earns a 10 and DeSantis, say, a 3 or a 4. Advantage: Strong Trump.
#7: Each candidate’s physiognomy
This is also an easy one. Trump is 6’3” and is polished in television, an excellent and entertaining impromptu speaker and looks the part; and DeSantis is 5’8”-5’10” (he wears heels) and looks like a squinting meatball.
Trump is a binary 1 and DeSantis a binary 0. Advantage: Strong Trump.
#8: Each candidate’s vision
Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign directly ripped off Reagan’s:
Trump basically just wanted to return to a Reagan-era American (back from when Trump was on top of the world, rich and famous and a “master dealmaker”, and thought of the time period glowingly); he had no greater vision, no philosophy and very little understanding of history. To say nothing for his COVID shutdown or heart attack jab response (Trump called the COVID vaccines “one of the greatest achievements of mankind”), which was quite bad. And now he and Don Jr. (as Trump’s proxy) are publicly embracing trannies and calling for the end of the Bud Light boycott.
DeSantis also seems like an empty suit with neocon financiers behind him, and he also got the COVID vaccine.
Even if either or both candidates were populists instead of globalists, populism itself is a losing position because it lacks a greater vision. The European blogger Kynosarges castigated the short-sightedness of right wing populism in a 2019 blog post, which he believes has six major deficiencies:
Right-wing populists have no awareness of the depth of the [societal] problem and the necessity of a massive social transformation.
Right-wing populists consider metapolitics irrelevant. They view our plight as strictly a matter of state policy, therefore solvable by the legislative and executive branches (which is understandable given point 1).
Right-wing populists do not command parliamentary majorities or sole governments – neither in the past nor in the present, nor likely in the future. They are always in opposition or dependent on coalition partners who are not right-wing populists.
The institutional corset of late liberalism narrows the factual scope for political action to such a degree that profound changes are impossible.
Right-wing populists offer no grand designs for solutions because they lack a positive alternative framework beyond “liberalism without foreigners” (which is closely linked to points 1 and 2).
Right-wing populists are objectively too slow even where they bring about changes. A critical comparison between the development of right-wing populism and demographics during recent decades clearly shows that this approach is impossible solely due to lack of time (ignoring points 1–5)…
Because of these issues, according to Kynosarges,
[Right wing populists] have no concept of how to actively solve the problems of late modernity or liberalism. They offer no counter-culture that goes beyond reactionary ideas. They become almost apolitical when they merely retreat into their nation-state bunkers (typical for Poland or Slovakia). They lack a dynamic counter-ideal, and they are not at all equipped to propagate such an ideal to the furthest corners of the West (and beyond), as the chief enemy is (still) capable of doing.
The equation of our identity with the liberal state (e.g. the Federal Republic of Germany as the land of the Germans) inevitably leads to disappointments and at best to the realization that this state neither defends nor recognizes our identity, sometimes even destroys it. No Western constitution has a decidedly identitarian foundation, nor is there any trend in that direction. Anyway such a foundation would be incompatible with the self-concept of liberalism (universalism, egalitarianism, individualism) – the left is correct on that point! But right-wing populists believe that liberalism would only need a “right-wing” orientation to solve the problem, thanks to insufficient analysis….
Modernity can only be overcome with the experiences of modernity, not by an utterly impossible return to an earlier or pre-modern era. The profound change that is now necessary is not genuinely political but belongs to the cultural, metapolitical sphere. Such a counter-enlightenment or counter-culture requires – in contrast to the liberalist eclecticism of right-wing populists – a spiritual preparation for a new European myth that binds us to our oldest past and reconciles us with our future. Nothing less than such an attempt at European rebirth is our task and the most promising exit from political modernity.
Ultimately, Trump scores a 3 and DeSantis an unknown but likely something comparable. Advantage: Neither.
#9: Each candidate’s symbolism
Trump will always be a symbol for white middle America given they elected him as a protest candidate; he was never supposed to win, and eeked out a win on the tiniest of margins: 107,000 votes across three states when Hillary failed to campaign because she was so far ahead in the polling and FBI head James Comey didn’t bother to rig it for the same reason. No matter what Trump does thereafter, including his extremely embarrassing shilling of the heart attack jabs, the establishment will always hate him for his un-approved win. DeSantis has no such symbolism; his symbolism is minor as the establishment-backed leader of a competently run Republican state.
Trump 10, Desantis maybe a 3. Advantage: clear Trump.
The Tally
To tally up the tale of the tape, we have:
Independence from large donors: Trump
The degre of policy effectualization: DeSantis
The quality of personnel choices: Tie
The quality of political allies: Tie
The emphasis placed on loyalty, both from and to others: DeSantis
The level of establishment opposition/expectation of vote rigging: Trump
The candidate’s physiognomy: Trump
The candidate’s vision: Tie
The candidate’s symbolism: Trump
So it is 4 Trump, 2 DeSantis, 3 tie. Trump is the preferred candidate of choice, although both are very flawed candidates.
I think I would vote for either of them over Biden, Kamala, Michelle "Big Mike” Obama or Newsom instead of sit out, with bottom-tier expectations, but regardless, just like 2020 and 2022, I believe the 2024 elections will be rigged to favor a establishment outcome. I think we will have rigged elections for the rest of our lives. (This isn’t to encourage apathy, just have the proper expectations; the roots of a problem can only be addressed with a level-headed, clear-eyed analysis).
Such as “Hope and Change” Obama turning around and letting Citigroup appoint his entire 2009 cabinet.
As a side note, there are only two, really one, potential explanations that makes sense for why Disney would self-immolate against its core audience like this: (1) their top shareholders Vanguard and Blackrock forced them to (they retain the voting rights in the shares they place for investors, which is incredibly nasty) or (2) Blackrock, which is deeply entangled with the Federal Reserve, made various promises regarding financial and political support to Disney that they found too enticing to turn down regardless of the public fallout.
This is a very common establishment move whenever there is a populist presidential candidate. By forcing a deep-statist in as vice president they can use that as leverage against the president for either impeachment or via assassination. This is why Kennedy’s vice president was pro-globohomo LBJ and why Reagan’s was former CIA head George H.W. Bush.
In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.
The founding vision of limited government, personal liberty and responsibility, has been systematically attacked, especially in the last 50 years. It no longer inspires or animates the majority, even in America. The notion that freedom of thought and action are highly desirable is now not even considered.
Entropy is coming.
Good score card, fair and balanced lol. I have a feeling they’ll run RFK Jr as an indie late in the game just so they put him on stage to syphon votes off of Trump, basically act as a spoiler a la Ross Perot. He can do that with his anti-vax stance alone and he’s not wrong there... Trump on the other hand gets booed every time he brings up Operation Warp Speed and yet he keeps doing it like he’s completely out of touch.