If you wish to know the truth regarding something as basic as “Will there be weather outside today?” Don’t even think of asking Roger Stone. Roger Stone can find a method to lie in a question with no correct answer. “Is it true that some people dress differently than others?” Stone may be able to respond by lying.
So we want to be very cautious when we state that Stone – who speaks for Donald Trump at all times, whether he has Trump’s approval or not – today hinted that Ron DeSantis spent a week in the sun over the holidays with the sultry, soulless, and thoughtless Emerald Robinson, formerly of Newsmax. (Well, ex reporter…after spreading all those bogus claims regarding covid-19.)
Ron DeSantis is married to a woman, a woman with cancer, a woman whose name is Casey DeSantis, not “Emerald Robinson.”
While it is true that DeSantis was missing for an unusually lengthy stretch of time over the holidays, Fox News reported that he did join his wife to one of her cancer treatments. Take what you will from it.
Returning to Roger Stone. Roger Stone would very certainly be in a federal maximum-security prison (possibly with Donald Trump) if he hadn’t lied for Trump and gotten his sentence reduced (not pardoned because if he was pardoned he could not take the 5th Amendment if asked a tough question).
Stone would never, ever say anything about anybody without Trump’s absolute authorization, or Stone is so certain that Trump would approve that he is ready to stake his freedom on it.
So it was intriguing when Stone wrote:
“Trump sometimes President Donald Trump hits it right on the nose. Ron DeSantis Yale Harvard fat boy can’t get out of his own way. Not smart. Not honest and not going to be president. An unknown congressman with a bad haircut and an ill fitting suit until Donald Trump made him governor. I know where he was when he was missing. Ask Emerald Robinson. #FuckRonDesantis…”
Roger Stone openly refers to himself as the “dirty trickster,” which gives us an option. We may choose to think Roger Stone is a liar who wants people to believe Ron DeSantis would abandon his cancerous wife to roll around Emerald when he did not and would not do so. Or maybe Ron DeSantis did, in fact, book a B&B in Key West and spend a week with Emerald, leaving his wife with cancer at home.
In any case, Trump’s objective has been completed. If DeSantis does not pledge that he will not run against Trump in 2024 soon, he should anticipate additional “dirty tactics.” A lot can be done with video editing today.
Donald Trump’s escalating spat with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is becoming more public. The former president and his former apprentice have lately taken public jabs at one other about pandemic-related concerns, comments that might foreshadow a clash between the two Republicans over their 2024 plans.
Trump seemed to be aiming directly at DeSantis when, in a recent interview, he called politicians who refuse to reveal whether or not they had gotten a coronavirus booster injection “gutless.”
Last month, DeSantis evaded the subject, though da ys later, in an interview with a conservative podcast, DeSantis fired back, stating that one of his greatest regrets as president was not speaking out “much louder” against Trump’s epidemic reaction.
While DeSantis and Trump’s relationship has apparently been tense for some time, their conflict has primarily played out in secret. With the midterm elections approaching and the 2024 field forming, DeSantis, who is up for reelection this year, seems to be defining himself as someone willing to take on the man who helped build him.
The fact that he is doing so over COVID-19 limits demonstrates “how far Republicans have gone to the right on coronavirus politics,” and puts Trump uncharacteristically out of sync with the hard-line elements of his party’s base.
DeSantis’ COVID answer, in many respects, fits Trump’s anti-science playbook, which, even with his tepid support of vaccinations, may no longer be severe enough for his own movement.
“DeSantis may or may not actually be more delusional on COVID than Donald Trump,” New York’s Jonathan Chait recently wrote. “But it is a revealing commentary on the state of their party that he sees his best chance to supplant Trump as positioning himself as even crazier.”
DeSantis has not said if he intends to run for president in 2024, but he is widely seen as a possible candidate, and, unlike other Trump supporters, he has not stated that he would not run if Trump does.
“The magic words,” as Trump is said to have told cronies and advisors.
The previous president has been questioned for his lack of reverence. “I wonder why the guy won’t say he won’t run against me,” Trump has said to several associates and advisers, according to the Times. But DeSantis has told friends that he thinks Trump’s “expectation that he bend the knee is asking too much.”
DeSantis has dismissed rumors that he would run for president in 2024 as “nonsense,” amid reports that Donald Trump has stepped up efforts to reclaim the White House.
“All the speculation about me is purely manufactured,” DeSantis said at a press conference on Tuesday to discuss a new COVID-19 treatment unit in St. Cloud, Florida.
“I just do my job. You know, we work hard. Obviously, our state has led on a lot of things including this and now other states are copying us. But that’s what it’s really all about, just helping folks here.”
He added: “I hear all this stuff and honestly it’s nonsense. So, you know, I really don’t know what to say to those rumors.”
DeSantis, who has yet to file his application to run for re-election as governor with the Florida Division of Elections, has been mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2024.
