Matt Hooper said:
The difference in discipline, focus and breadth of subject knowledge is enormous. Desantis 1 on 1 vs Trump is going to be very lopsided in Desantis's favor.
The Dem-Media complex undoubtedly know Trump is the far weaker candidate so it will be interesting to see how they try and kneecap Desantis in the early primary states.
Trump will never allow himself to be 1v1 against DeSantis. He avoided it with Cruz and he will definitely avoid it with Ron. What DeSantis needs to do is just keep pushing Trump to have to do more events and not hide so that the appearance become more and more striking.
Trump is in a tough situation because he is feeling forced to have to do these small venue events like the ones in Iowa and those make him look small. So much of Trump is the image of flying in on his jet and speaking to huge crowds of people that love him. He's also good at the East Palestine type stuff where he shows up at a McDonalds and buys everybody lunch or sends pizzas to the cops. Standing on stage in a small venue of people sitting down and answering questions forces him to have a straight up comparison to DeSantis and he just doesn't look good. Trump is all about the mystique and star power and you just don't look like a star talking to a bunch of blue hairs in a room of 100 people talking policy.
Problem is I don't think he could do multiple events in a row and pull 10k people. He might be able to do it once a month but not 3X per week. So he risks having an event with poor attendance and looking really diminished.
Trump needs that imagery or else he is toast and I think that's where the attacks on DeSantis are really hurting him. Even among his base there aren't many folks who want to go listen to Trump come up with new nicknames for a well liked and very conservative Governor that has a lot of skins on the wall. It turns people off.
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Ronald Reagan
