Conservatives turn on Trump for attacking Ron DeSantis ahead of midterms: ‘What an idiot’

Conservative commentators who are typically Donald Trump's allies turned on the former president after he went after Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday.

Trump mocked DeSantis as "Ron DeSanctimonious" while discussing the 2024 Republican presidential primary at a rally in Pennsylvania. The pair is widely considered to be the top contenders for the Republican nomination, though DeSantis has offered no indication he intends to run. Commentators called out Trump for creating division in the ranks just three days before the midterm elections.

"DeSantis is an extremely effective conservative governor who has had real policy wins and real cultural wins. Trump isn’t going to be able to take this one down with a dumb nickname. He better have more than that up his sleeve," wrote Matt Walsh, a commentator at The Daily Wire and a leading voice among social conservatives.

"Also, nice job launching your public attack against the most popular conservative governor in America three days before the midterms when we’re all supposed to be showing a united front," he added.

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"What an idiot," wrote Rod Dreher, a senior editor at The American Conservative. "DeSantis is a far more effective leader of the Right than Trump was, if, that is, you expect a leader to get a lot done, rather than just talking about it and owning the libs."

Fox News contributor and editor at the Spectator Ben Domenech said simply that Trump's nickname for DeSantis "needs work."

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Many other influential figures on the right weighed in against Trump.

Trump's Saturday comments came as he was discussing current polling for the 2024 primaries, which have shown Trump enjoying a huge lead.

"We’re winning big in the Republican Party for the nomination like nobody’s ever seen before. There it is, Trump at 71 percent, Ron DeSanctimonious at 10%," Trump said. "Mike Pence at seven, oh, Mike is doing better than I thought. Liz Cheney there’s no way she’s at 4%. There’s no way. There’s no way. But we’re at 71 to 10 to 7 to 4."

A presidential straw poll at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit found that 78.7% of attendees favored Trump to be the Republican nominee in 2024. 

Another straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in August found that Trump had 69% support from attendees to run in 2024. DeSantis came in with just 24% support.

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Nevertheless, DeSantis has carried the victory in some 2024 primary polls. A survey of Republicans in New Hampshire saw the governor take a thin lead over Trump in a potential Republican primary in June. The poll showed 39% of likely Republican primary voters in the Granite State would support the first-term Florida governor, with 37% backing the former president.

Cory Booker Thinks Dems ‘Still Have A Very Strong Pathway’ To Hold The Senate, Add Seats In Midterms

Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said that Democrats still have a chance to hold the U.S. Senate.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, Booker claimed that Democrats are “bucking” the historical trend in which a first-term president’s party usually loses in the midterm elections. Democrats have been pushing those talking points in recent days as Republicans are relying on public polling to advance an alternative narrative.

“The party in the White House usually loses during midterms but the reality is we still have a very strong pathway,” Booker said. “Not just to keeping the Senate but really picking up seats in… Pennsylvania and in places like Wisconsin and North Carolina. This election still is in the ballots. And the reality is we’re bucking what are usual trends.”

“I think that this is a tough election season,” Booker continued. “It’s a midterm election. But I still see a pathway for us to maintain control of the Senate.”

When asked how Democrats could win, Booker said it would happen if they showed up at the polls and vote. “It happens by voter turnout,” he said. “I mean, when I’m going around the country, I see a lot of enthusiasm, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to translate that to people getting out.”

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the same thing in an interview with the Associated Press last week. “It’s tight,” Schumer said. “I believe Democrats will hold the Senate and maybe even pick up seats.”

“I don’t want to give the illusion that these are all slam dunks,” he continued, but “[t]he fact that we’re in the ballpark and our Democratic candidates are defying the political environment is a testament to a few things.”

“[Voters] are seeing how extreme these Republican candidates are, and they don’t like it. And second, they’re seeing the Democrats are talking to them on issues they care about, and that we’ve accomplished a great deal on things.”

Democratic activists and legacy media have recently attacked public polling, especially surveys that favor Republicans. After the New York Times released a series of polls showing Democrats in the lead in key battleground Senate races, leftist media personalities blasted those that found Republicans leading in those races, calling them “cheap” and “partisan” while accusing them of trying to manufacture a red wave.

“If you get past those headlines and dig a little deeper, you would uncover an insidious and seemingly intentional campaign from Republican-backed polling firms to flood the zone and tip the balance of polling averages in favor of their candidates, to create a narrative that Republicans are surging and that a red wave is imminent and inevitable,” MSNBC host Joy Reid said in a monologue on her show “The ReidOut” Monday.

“Most of the polling over the last few weeks is coming from partisan outfits — usually Republican — or auto-dial firms,” New York Times pollster Nate Cohn claimed in an editorial touting his own polling. “These polls are cheap enough to flood the zone, and many of them were emboldened by the 2020 election, when their final results came close to the election results even as other pollsters struggled.”

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