Reports of tension between former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are spilling like a wrecked glue truck throughout social media, conservative, and liberal news outlets.
The Daily Mail reports that DeSantis is refusing to “bend a knee to Donald Trump” and says backing him in the 2024 election ‘is too much to ask’. But who did DeSantis say that to?
Allegedly, Trump criticized DeSantis, saying he had ‘no personal charisma’ and ‘dull personality’ as reported by the New York Times.
‘In the context of the 2024 election, he usually gives DeSantis a pop in the nose in the middle of that type of conversation,’ a source who recently spoke to Trump about DeSantis told Axios.
The source, who shared the private remarks on the condition of anonymity, has heard Trump criticize DeSantis on multiple occasions, according to the Axios report.
On the ‘Ruthless’ podcast that aired on Friday, DeSantis also took aim at Dr. Fauci accusing Fauci of relying on data from China that was not “trustworthy” as federal lockdown orders took the country by storm.
“People like Fauci panicked,” DeSantis said as he expressed frustration with the country’s lockdowns. “They were following the data out of China, which is not trustworthy.”
DeSantis added that if he had known the massive lockdown “was a threat earlier,” he would “have been much louder” in his opposition to lockdown the measures.
As of January 18, 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is ramping up his campaign for re-election as Governor of the state. A presidential bid has not been announced and according to our source, the Governor is focused on being the Governor.
Also as of January 18, 2022, former President Trump has not formally announced running in the presidential race. Although during his weekend Arizona rally, Trump came pretty close to saying he was running, however, he didn’t.
The old saying rings true, get it first, but first, get it right.
So are there tensions between the two? Or maybe convenient timing for a distraction away from the stellar week that the White House had.
Biden’s Approval Rating Craters To Shocking New Low
President Joe Biden’s approval rating continues to drop as voters grow increasingly dissatisfied with his handling of key issues, according to the results of a new poll.
Biden’s approval rating dropped to a new low of 33%, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, with 53% of Americans saying they disapprove of the president’s performance. The rating is down 3% since November 2021, when Biden held a 36% approval rating.
Hispanic voters were least supportive of Biden’s job performance, with 28% saying they approve of how he is handling his duties, compared to 32% of white voters and 57% of black voters. Just 25% of independent voters said they approve of Biden’s performance, while 57% said they disapprove.
Voters were critical of Biden’s handling of key issues, including the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic and foreign policy.
Just 34% of Americans said they approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, with 57% saying they disapprove. The results follow several months of increasing inflation, with the Consumer Price Index currently rising at its highest rate in 40 years.
Americans also said they believed the economy is suffering, with 35% saying the economy is in a “poor” condition and another 35% saying it is in a “not so good” condition.
Biden’s handling of foreign policy received similar levels of disapproval, with only 35% saying they approve of his performance on the issue. The Biden administration received harsh criticism for its withdrawal from Afghanistan in August that left hundreds of Americans stranded.
Biden fared slightly better on COVID-19, with 39% of Americans saying they approve of his response to the virus, though 55% said they disapprove.
Americans also viewed Biden as polarizing: 49% said Biden is dividing the United States, and 42% said they view the president as unifying the country.
The poll surveyed 1,313 American adults from Jan. 7-10, and it has a margin of 2.7%.
Public’s Preference For The GOP Grows To Its Highest Point In 25 Years
The Biden-Harris administration has failed to deliver on many of its promises, including shutting down the virus, boosting the economy, and uniting the country.
But President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and their fellow Democrats in and outside of Congress are helping deliver more voters to the Republican Party.
On Monday, the Gallup organization noted that just during 2021 – Biden and Harris’ first year in office – party identification among voters swung 14 percentage points in favor of the GOP.
As Gallup explained, “On average, Americans’ political party preferences in 2021 looked similar to prior years, with slightly more U.S. adults identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic (46%) than identified as Republicans or leaned Republican (43%).”
“However, the general stability for the full-year average obscures a dramatic shift over the course of 2021, from a nine-percentage-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter to a rare five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter.”
At the beginning of last year, Gallup noted, its survey found that 49 percent of respondents claimed to be Democrats or leaned that way, compared to just 40 percent who were in the GOP camp.
Yet by the end of 2021, the Republicans had the advantage, by 47 percent to 42 percent.
The results were based on interviews with 12,000 people, Gallup said.
The survey “gives a measure of the relative strength of the two parties politically,” Gallup said.
The Democrat’s number at the beginning of 2021 likely showed the exasperation many felt from the Trump years. Former President Donald Trump left office with an approval rating of 34 percent, the lowest of his tenure in office.
Accordingly, a year ago Democrats boasted their highest outcome in Gallup’s poll since the last quarter of 2012, when then-President Barack Obama was re-elected.
Yet the year-end data showed how profound the shift to the right was.
Feds Adopt The DeSantis-Florida Model Of Not Counting Daily COVID Deaths
Liberals in Florida, as well as outside the state, melted down last summer when the Florida Department of Health no longer reported COVID-19 deaths on a daily basis.
The agency switched to a weekly report, which is felt more accurately reflected the ongoing trend, and critics of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, or “DeathSantis,” immediately smelled a cover-up.
It’ll be interesting to see what many of those same COVID hawks will say now that President Joe Biden’s administration, in another admission that the president has given up on his pledge to “shut down the virus,” has told hospitals to no longer count virus-related deaths on a daily basis.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Jan. 6 released updated guidelines on reporting procedures for hospitals.
The rules say the update is intended, in part, to capture COVID cases involving children.
But the guidelines also spell out the “retirement of [data] fields which are no longer required to be reported.”
They include the total number of beds for adult patients, the total number of mechanical ventilators and those in-use, emergency room overflow and ventilated patients, and the “previous day’s COVID-19 deaths.”
“This field has been made inactive for the federal data collection,” the document further explains the death data. “Hospitals no longer need to report these data elements to the federal government.”
The change takes effect on Feb. 2. The move has already drawn different takes from the left.
The liberal Business Insider tried to play down the shift. The website admitted it was true the Biden administration would no longer collect that data on a daily basis. But, BI added, “it does not necessarily affect the daily COVID-19 death counts that the vast majority of people have been consulting throughout the pandemic.”
BI cited sources who called the change “misleading” because that daily fatality data is gathered by and available from other sources. They also defended it by noting the HHS count does not give the full picture because about a third of COVID deaths occur outside of hospitals.
But BI did quote some who saw the dark cloud inside the silver lining.
“‘If you don’t test, there’s fewer cases’ has morphed into the even more horrible monstrosity of ‘if you don’t report deaths, they’re not happening,’” said one Twitter user quoted by BI.
Yet the left-wing World Socialist Web Site took a dim view of the move – and, of course, blamed former President Donald Trump, since Biden is apparently never responsible for anything that happens on his watch.
“The move by the Biden administration to weaken the reporting of COVID-19 deaths has direct precedents in the Trump administration,” the WSWS said. That referred to a decision on testing guidance implemented under Trump that reportedly was done to mask the spread of the virus.
The WSWS also noted that Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Biden’s former top adviser on COVID, wrote an opinion article recently that noted the nation should be prepared for a “new normal” of living with COVID whose goal is not “zero COVID.”
Under the new normal, Emanuel argued, the appropriate risk threshold” is measured by weekly death tallies – as DeSantis implemented for Florida back in June.
Noting that it disagreed with DeSantis, the WSWS added, “There is no public health justification for the limiting of data reporting in the midst of a raging pandemic which is currently setting records for infections and hospitalizations. Just like under Trump, the efforts by the federal and state governments to limit reporting on COVID-19 is driven by a political effort to cover up mass infection and death.”
Filibuster Bust
Biden failed to align Senate Democrats behind an effort to get rid of the filibuster to pave the way for election reform and voting rights legislation.
Longtime Democratic political strategist James Carville called that a bad week for Biden but not a bad year on NBC’s meet the press.
“No, no, as a matter of fact, he’s had a bad year. He’s had 52 weeks of bad weeks,” Utah Senator Mitt Romney told host Chuck Todd in response to a question about where the nation is right now.
Though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has brought his party’s voting bills to the floor throughout 2021, they have faced insurmountable opposition from Senate Republicans every time, who have relied on the filibuster to tank the legislation that they describe as a federal takeover of elections that could invite voter fraud.
In response, Schumer and most Senate Democrats have endorsed scrapping the 60-vote threshold, but in their way stand Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. The two centrist Democrats have said time and time again that they will not support abolishing the filibuster, denying Democrats the unanimous support they need to adopt the change even though they support their party’s voting legislation.
“I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” Sinema said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Tensions are raised within the country, and traditional nonpartisan issues are transformed into partisan wedges. We must address the disease itself, the disease of division, to protect our democracy. And it cannot be achieved by one party alone,” she said.
Democrats have argued that their reforms are necessary to counter a number of election reform bills passed in Republican state legislatures across the country in the wake of the 2020 election. While Republicans have said the bills are necessary to protect against potential voter fraud, Democrats have alleged that they amount to little more than voter suppression laws.
Supreme Court On Vaccine Mandate
The U.S. Supreme Court denied President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for more than 80 million American workers.
In a predictable 6-3 vote, the conservatives on the court indicated in a decision handed down Thursday that Biden could not go where Congress had not authorized a president to venture – even during a pandemic.
“The challenges posed by a global pandemic,” the majority said in its ruling, “do not allow a federal agency to exercise power that Congress has not conferred upon it.”
“The question before us is not how to respond to the pandemic, but who holds the power to do so,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his own opinion in support of the majority. “The answer is clear: Under the law as it stands today, that power rests with the states and Congress, not OSHA,” or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Convenient Distraction?
Pitting two strong republicans, the former President and current Governor of Florida against each other makes sense to create the much-needed distraction from the calamity that’s taken place during this current administration.
Not even touching on the COVID mishaps, Afghanistan withdrawal, the border disaster, record violent crime, smash and grabs, and the incredible way unification of our country has come together, yes, it makes sense to pit two strong republicans against each other.
Liam Edgar contributed to this column.
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