Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was once thought of by many political observers (including this author) to be a serious threat to win not only the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but the general election itself. In a 2023 survey by pollster WPA intelligence, President Joe Biden was projected to narrowly defeat former President Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup, but would have lost the Electoral College majority to DeSantis.
However, DeSantis ended his campaign after Iowa's nominating contest, in which he lost to Trump by more than 30,000 votes despite spending tens of millions of dollars and going all-in on a ground game that blitzed all 99 counties (also known as a “full Grassley”). Business Insider reported that between DeSantis and all of his allied PACs, he spent nearly $1,500 per vote yet failed to win even one of those counties.
Rolling Stone reported that Trumpworld was ecstatic about DeSantis suspending his campaign.
“According to sources familiar with Trump and others familiar with the situation, the former president has for months discussed his desire to detonate DeSantis’ future prospects on the national Republican stage — unless the Florida governor moved to shutter his 2024 headquarters and start pleading for forgiveness,” reporters Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng wrote.
“Aside from privately stating the necessity of DeSantis kissing ‘a lot’ of Trump’s ‘ass,’ the 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner has told some close associates that if DeSantis is ‘smart,’ he will speedily endorse Trump and then beg the ex-president for absolution ‘like he’s never begged for anything before in his life,’ according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter,” the report continued.
The call by Trump’s allies to publicly humiliate Ron DeSantis is straight out of the fascism playbook. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in the Guardian last year, fascism “depends on organized bullying — a form of social darwinism.”
“The ostensible goal of fascism is to strengthen society. Fascism’s method of accomplishing this is to reward those who win economically and physically and to denigrate or exterminate those who lose,” Reich wrote. “For the fascist, war and violence are the means of strengthening society by culling the weak from society and extolling heroic warriors.”
The fact that DeSantis was so quick to not only end his campaign but endorse the man he once dismissed as a “keyboard warrior” who “lost the zip on [his] fastball” suggests that Trump’s death grip on the Republican Party is even tighter than previously imagined. And the Florida governor’s pitiful performance has a dark undertone: Most Republicans, and many independents, apparently have a craving for the unchecked lawless vengeance that Trump has promised if he wins a second term.
On one hand, it’s a good sign that DeSantis’ anti-woke culture war campaign was soundly rejected by the same voters he spent $35 million failing to court. On the other hand, it’s arguably even more worrisome that those policies were rejected in favor of Donald Trump’s open pledge to use the power of his office to exact vengeance against the right’s political enemies.
Only Trump satisfies the GOP’s thirst for retribution
What makes 2024 different from all other previous presidential contests is the incredibly high stakes of the current political moment. As a criminal defendant named in four indictments in three separate jurisdictions (Georgia, New York, and federal), Trump is essentially running for president as a means of avoiding incarceration, as a conviction on any single one of the 91 felony charges he’s currently facing would almost certainly mean the septuagenarian would spend the rest of his life in a prison cell.
If he were to win the November general election, Trump would have to rend the rule of law almost immediately in order to stay in power. He’s already openly called for the termination of articles of the US Constitution on his Truth Social account. His constant drumbeat for absolute broad presidential immunity is a signal that his second term would be virtually lawless. And his comment to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he would govern as a dictator “but only on day one” comes off as less tongue-in-cheek when considering his argument that he should enjoy absolute immunity even for acts that “cross the line.”
Revenge has been the overall defining theme of Trump’s 2024 presidential bid. In a 2023 speech in Waco, Trump told a crowd of supporters, “I am your warrior, I am your justice.”
“For those who have been wronged and betrayed… I am your retribution,” he said.
The 45th president has not been coy about his plans for a second term. If sent back to the White House, Trump has indicated he would weaponize the Department of Justice to indict and prosecute his political opponents, including Biden and his family. Under this rationale, it’s easy to deduce that Trump’s call for absolute broad presidential immunity would apply only to him. Kash Patel, who was a national security official in Trump’s White House, said a second-term Trump would also include journalists in his vengeance campaign. Should any protest movements arise to demonstrate against Trump, he has already hinted at invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the US military as an anti-protest police force.
Trump would have little to fear from civil service employees bristling at carrying out his legally questionable orders. The far-right Heritage Foundation has, under its “Project 2025” presidential transition plan, already started screening potential employees to install in policy-making roles throughout Washington if Trump (or any Republican) were elected. While presidential appointees typically don’t number more than a few thousand, Trump has already planned to issue an executive order dubbed “Schedule F,” which would remove numerous employment protections for federal workers and give Trump the ability to install as many as 50,000 political loyalists throughout the most influential government agencies. It would effectively establish the so-called “deep state” Trump has spent his political career criticizing.
The fact that the former president has been so open about his plans for a brazenly authoritarian second term may be one of the key reasons why he is so beloved by the GOP base. Republicans who felt scorned and marginalized after losing the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, the White House in 2020, and the US Senate in 2022 (and only reclaiming the House due to racial gerrymandering) have been longing for a strongman leader who will unilaterally right all perceived wrongs and punish their enemies, even if it means breaking the law.
While it may be tempting to celebrate DeSantis’ embarrassing defeat and public humiliation given the havoc he’s wreaked on Florida’s LGBTQ+ population, we should instead ask ourselves why so many Republicans were nonplussed about his candidacy. The ugly truth of Trump’s coronation in the 2024 GOP primary has been laid bare: Not only does a second Trump term promise the same kind of state-sanctioned bullying DeSantis cultivated in Florida, but it would exact brutal vengeance on anyone who dares to challenge the absolute authority of the supreme leader. Making Donald Trump the 47th president of the United States would almost certainly be the death knell for democracy; not just in America, but around the world.
Carl Gibson is a journalist whose work has been published in CNN, USA TODAY, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, Barron’s, Business Insider, the Independent, and NPR, among others. Follow him on Bluesky @crgibs.bsky.social.
