That’s a problem, Trump knows, for DeSantis, who is running his rival presidential campaign on just two main ideas so far — the wonderfulness of Florida and the horror of woke.
The first DeSantis bet is on the presumption that America at large aspires to be more like Florida, which DeSantis portrays as a refuge for “hope and sanity” — especially during the pandemic, when it lifted lockdowns early and let kids back in schools, even if there were fewer books there.
(Trump, a Florida resident, inevitably helps DeSantis with this claim — the former president could live anywhere, after all.)
But the far more prominent message of DeSantis’s campaign is that he is Anti-Woke — and not just that, but that he is The Great Woke Hunter, like some figure out of Hemingway with a rifle and a sense of manliness that necessitates a corruption of compassion.
In Iowa this week, even after Trump laid his trap, DeSantis doubled down on his Anti-Woke Hero pose, as seen below.
