Ron DeSantis holds himself out to be the next Trump, should “Donald” Trump find himself busy during the run-up to the next election. We refuse to speculate about the likelihood as to whether Trump will be eligible to run for office again or whether he will be in the midst of criminal defense. Donald Trump is not a young man, either.

But Ron DeSantis is a young man and he seems primed to out MAGA anyone. Not only does Ron DeSantis have the required “I don’t give a sh*t attitude, not only does he hate all but fellow MAGAs, not only does he demand loyalty, but he seems to have the abusive attitude required to blossom into full Trump.

Politico has a fantastic scoop this morning with plenty of nuggets that expose DeSantis’s inner asshole, proving that DeSantis is a real threat to be dealt with. Before we scoff, we should recall that we scoffed at Trump (at least some of us did), and we should also appreciate that DeSantis has risen easily through every post so far, having never lost an election and has always had his eye on the prize. DeSantis will have a bit of a problem in that he has no real loyalists around him, ready to run through a wall for him, something that actually is required to bust through the early stages in any political campaign.

According to Politico:

We talked to a dozen or so onetime aides and consultants to the Florida governor, and they all said the same thing: DeSantis treats staff like expendable widgets. He largely relies on a brain trust of two: himself and his wife, CASEY DESANTIS, a former local TV journalist. Beyond that, there are few, if any, “DeSantis people,” as far as political pros are concerned.

There is nothing more poisonous to any campaign or business in which there is a candidate or boss, a formal support structure built on down from the candidate, but with a spouse outside the structure and yet feels entitled to order the staff around.

A “support group” of former DeSantis staffers meets regularly to trade war stories about their hardship working for the governor. The turnover in his office and among his campaign advisers is well known among Republicans: In three of his five full years in Congress, he ranked in at least the 70th percentile in terms of highest turnover in a House office, according to data compiled by Legistorm. In the governor’s office, he has only two staffers who started with him when he was a junior member of Congress.

Another story relayed to us by five former staffers: At the beginning of his administration, DeSantis directed the Florida Republican Party leader to fire a party official who had cancer — on that person’s first week back from surgery.

Try to wrap your mind around what kind of monster will fire an official with cancer on his/her first week back from surgery. Let’s pretend one wanted to make a change in staffing and move that person without regard to cancer. One puts that person on medical leave for six months and discusses options. The person is paid through that recovery period, while also given time to find something new. This is what all of us would do, but not the animal that is Ron DeSantis. This is the type of move that demoralizes staff. It builds resentment into a white-hot fury that might lead others to bury booby traps. It has happened before. It certainly results in leaks. We are reading about them here.

DeSantis often blames his staff for his own blunders, we’re told. After DeSantis went on Fox News in 2018 and implored Florida voters not to “monkey this up” by supporting his African American Democratic opponent for governor, he and his wife chewed out his campaign staff for not cleaning up the mess, according to three former staffers. Shortly after, DeSantis brought in a whole new group of advisers.

Aides would lure DeSantis to staff meetings with cupcakes, saying that it was a colleague’s birthday to get him to attend. In the gubernatorial primary, DeSantis visited his campaign headquarters just a couple of times. “It’s him and Casey. But everyone else is like a disposable piece of garbage.” 

If one wanted to write a book; “How to Ensure One’s Staff Works Against You in 10 Easy Steps,” DeSantis could be the model. How many of us would rather have our nails pulled out than treat people like this? How many of us would prefer to treat staff so well that they form a team with a team goal, all of whom ready to work extra, “clean up messes,” and run through walls as a team, for a team goal? It just goes to show, DeSantis is truly committed to the MAGA lifestyle. People are pawns to be used as tools, nothing more.

Firing a person with cancer, right after surgery… say no more. How would he treat the nation? The same way he’s treating Florida.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak