Florida

There’s a “Draft Ron DeSantis” campaign afoot within the Republican Party as some conservatives attempt to find a standard bearer not named Donald Trump. The Florida governor has attained popularity among vocal right-wing activists due to his resistance to drawn-out coronavirus mitigation measures beyond his initial “stay at home” and bar and restaurant closure orders and the banning of alcohol sales at bars. His public squabble with Rebekah Jones, the creator of his state health department’s Covid-19 dashboard, led to more praise from conservatives when her whistleblower story started showing cracks. DeSantis’s likability rose further after a “pay-to-play” implication by CBS last year turned out to be false.

“My way, or the highway,” was, at one time in the not-so-distant past, quite a popular phrase to associate with American dads. Cockburn recalls his fellow classmates invoking the maxim as evidence to their fathers’ strictness. “My dad is tough, man, he always says ‘it’s my way or the highway.’” On the contrary, Cockburn would respond, that statement shows your father to be quite reasonable, pusillanimous even: “Ahh, you’ve got it easy, then; your dad gives you a choice. Mine doesn’t allow the highway option.” Having a choice is what differentiates a command from a recommendation. Not terribly complicated — yet this simple fact apparently evades a great many in our media class.

Will he or won't he? Americans tired of the rampant speculation are surely having a relief-filled two months. First Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady responded to a hasty ESPN report by announcing his retirement from the NFL. Then, former president Donald Trump told a roaring crowd at CPAC that he intends to run for America's highest office a third time. "We did it twice, and we’ll do it again,” Trump said. “We’re going to be doing it again." Trump's announcement is a gut punch for other 2024 contenders who secretly hoped he'd step back and play kingmaker.

Nikki Fried, Florida’s commissioner of agriculture and Democratic candidate for the state’s governorship, recently compared Governor Ron DeSantis to Hitler. Fried’s deplorable comparison, sadly, was right in line with an erratic gubernatorial campaign laced with desperation and idiocy. Fried has attempted to position herself as Florida’s savior from the supposedly despotically inclined DeSantis. The problem for her — and for anyone who runs against DeSantis for that matter — is that over the course of the pandemic the incumbent has become an extremely popular political superstar. An increasing number of Floridians want him to continue transforming the state as he sees fit.

The music blares, sparks fly from the pyrotechnics show, and the star walks out, pumping his fist and soaking in the cheers of the adoring crowd. A WWE wrestling event? No, it’s Congressman Matt Gaetz at AMERICAFEST, a Turning Point USA conference in December in Phoenix, Arizona. Gaetz was not there to deliver a substantive policy speech, educate the crowd about the dangers of inflationary spending or warn about Russia’s geopolitical machinations in Ukraine. Instead, the thirty-nine-year-old MAGA firebrand delivered the goods his audience expected.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, like many a New York progressive, headed down to the Sunshine State recently. First she was photographed having a drink with her ginger boyfriend. The youngish lovebirds were having a grand old time, and to that, as a Miami native and a lover of all things 305, I say, good for them. That’s what Miami’s here for, even for the haters. AOC is a hater, no doubt, what with her DeSantis-bashing and insufferable histrionics, but a moron she is not. She may be a ditz, but like Trump, she has a preternatural understanding of the social media political ecosystem and how to manipulate it. That's why she decided to come to Miami and decided to be photographed, smiling and maskless. AOC was not caught.

Orlando, Florida   Cockburn just got back from the second annual National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida. The ballroom of the Orlando Hilton can hold more than a thousand people. A little snowbird tells Cockburn that Yoram Hazony, the event's organizer, was in panic mode in the days before the summit. Not enough people had paid for the $315 ticket or $2,500 VIP pass. It seems even DC politicos had better things to do on Halloween than listen to Josh Hawley scream about porn. Cockburn hears that every right-wing organization in attendance received emails from Hazony begging them to help ship out more people. In the end, the official turnout was 700 attendees — though a hundred of them were the ladies and gentlemen of the press, and most of them were on a freebie.

October is upon us, which means it’s horror movie season. And a new release promises ‘a dark dystopian story’ that depicts ‘terrifyingly evil’ behavior. But Cockburn raised an eyebrow at the trailer for Florever Purge, which contains very little to fear and a lot to love. Among the supposedly blood-curdling lines uttered by the movie’s main villain: ‘We trust people to make their own decisions’ and ‘We’re not going to be bludgeoning people with restrictions, mandates, lockdowns or any of that stuff.’ Cockburn is no horror connoisseur, but ‘I’m going to leave you alone’ doesn’t give him goosebumps. For most of the trailer, Cockburn found himself not hiding behind his sofa, but nodding his head in agreement.

It went virtually unnoticed in April when Donald Trump recruited Susie Wiles to oversee his fundraising operation and create a system for issuing endorsements. Wiles is a veteran political consultant in Florida, having worked for Sen. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis and helped with Trump’s campaigns there. 'The president tells everyone around Mar-a-Lago that Susie is now in charge,’ an adviser told Politico. Despite media narratives of Jared Kushner’s withdrawal from Trump’s affairs, one source with knowledge of Mar-a-Lago’s inner workings said Wiles serves a 'buffer to give Kushner distance’. Wiles currently works with Kushner confidant Bill Stepien on endorsements. According to broadcaster Stew Peters, Wiles isn’t taking a paycheck for her work.

Federal authorities indicted a man on Tuesday who stands accused of extorting Rep. Matt Gaetz’s father for $25 million. For months, Gaetz has claimed Stephen Alford, the indicted man, conspired with a former Air Force intelligence officer and a retired DoJ prosecutor to extort his family, amid an ongoing FBI investigation into the lawmaker for sex trafficking. At the center of the alleged plot was an attempt by the group to free an ex-American spy, Bob Levinson, who was captured in Iran over a decade ago and believed to be dead. The development raises more questions than answers in the Matt Gaetz sex trafficking saga.

Kissimmee, Florida On Thursday morning as I boarded my plane at Reagan National Airport to fly to Orlando, I managed to drop an entire Dunkin iced coffee all over the floor near the cockpit. The unfortunate incident was a harbinger of things to come on my trip to a Young Americans for Liberty conference, the first since the start of the pandemic. I'm still not sure how, exactly, I was chosen to go to this conference, which was allegedly 'invitation-only'.  A 'deputy regional director' with the organization slid into my Instagram DMs offering to cover half of my travel expenses to attend. She assured me that the conference was not just for college students, and I am never one to pass up a cheap trip to the Free State of Florida.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis is carrying an enormous burden, whether he knows it or not. As of right now, he is single-handedly carrying the GOP and its still somewhat loyal Trump base on his back and away from Donald Trump in four years. There is a buzz around DeSantis and a possible 2024 presidential run that hasn’t been seen or felt since perhaps Chris Christie circa 2010. Everyone saw how that worked out. DeSantis would find himself in a precarious position by crossing Trump, who as of now seems to be refusing to retire quietly and settle into a role as the GOP kingmaker. The king wants his crown back.

The summertime auguries bode badly for former president Donald Trump, who has made a business of harmlessly splashing his feet in the Rubicon. He has reportedly made up his mind about running for president again in 2024 but won't say whether he'll cross the river yet — so you'll just have to keep giving him your money to find out. Naturally, people are growing bored and frustrated with the spectacle. QAnon supporters are probably Trump's most fervent followers, and they received his recent rally in Wellington, Ohio, with a sigh of ennui. Apart from the standard artillery blasting traitorous RINOs, Trump railed against the rising tide of crime and ridiculed 'woke' generals. But the diehards snored.

Nothing could be more predictable than media coverage of the catastrophic building collapse in Surfside, Florida. Cable news will feature it because the story is both shocking and eye-catching. Their obvious problem is that the cable channels have hours of air-time to fill and precious little real information, beyond dreadful pictures and interviews with bereaved friends and family and others who escaped the tragedy. To save hours of watching this low-information disaster footage, the best thing is to read the story on your favorite website and watch very little TV. That is true of every breaking-news news story where real information is scarce at first.

The term ‘Florida man’ usually comes loaded with negative connotations, but not if you’re talking about Ron DeSantis. The first-term Republican governor’s approval ratings have reached 64 percent; a recent poll had him at 55 percent, still high for an unabashed conservative in a swing state. Enterprising apparel companies are already selling ‘DeSantis 2024’ gear — and a Trafalgar poll of likely contenders (excluding Trump) shows DeSantis leading the pack with 35 percent support among Republican voters. The Florida governor also bested Trump in a straw poll conducted during June's Western Conservative Summit in Denver. DeSantis’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has earned him adoration from the right.

In a tragic traffic accident at the Wilton Manors Stonewall Pride march near Fort Lauderdale, a driver lost control of his vehicle and careered into members who were marching. One person was killed and another was hospitalized. This was of course not how social media saw it, as rumors of a terrorist attack rocketed around Twitter, aided in no small part by irresponsible comments from Fort Lauderdale mayor Dean Trantalis. The mayor claimed on camera that the incident was a ‘terrorist attack against the LGBT community’. He then seemed to hint that the intended target was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz: ‘Hardly an accident. It was deliberate, it was premeditated and it was targeted against a specific person.