The internecine battles between supporters of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis’s respective presidential campaigns grow more heated and more personal on a daily basis.
The pro-DeSantis team has lately adopted the parlance of the Never Trumpers, with some even calling Trump a “criminal” in light of the Biden regime’s federal witch hunt against President Trump and his America First movement. After years of being smeared, persecuted, and demonized by the entirety of the system, Trump supporters have been primed to see this as more than mere disagreement; this is instead a betrayal on par with treason.
Connections between backers of DeSantis and right-wing proponents of cancel culture have become too stark to ignore. Fox News unceremoniously removed Tucker Carlson, ratings king and the most popular and influential commentator on the U.S. populist right, from their network shortly after paying hundreds of millions to Dominion Voting Systems to quash a lawsuit. The message is clear: Fox News no longer has the stomach to battle for the soul of our nation, preferring to fall on the sword for political and economic calculations. At the same time, they continually run fawning puff pieces for DeSantis. The Republican establishment’s last anointed savior, failed presidential candidate Jeb Bush, wrote a particularly banal piece talking about why he is ready for Ron.
The subversion of America First represents a far worse and more insidious version of cancel culture than that pushed relentlessly by the Left. In the latter case, the process is straightforward: They are authoritarians who want to crush all dissent. On the Right, the establishment’s enforcers and commissars are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They pay lip service to the talking points, but they seek a convenient opportunity to commit the political hit ordered by their paymasters and deliver the scalp of a Patriot to the donor class. (RELATED: DAVID S. JACKSON: Trump Backers Are Smearing America’s Best Hope For Real Conservative Change)
DeSantis’s sheer hubris jeopardizes his record and legacy in his home state. If DeSantis had waited patiently and continued emulating Trump in word and deed, he may have organically emerged as a logical standard-bearer of the MAGA movement worthy of consideration as a potential Republican presidential nominee in 2028. But DeSantis’s blind ambition has effected an ill-advised 2024 presidential run that will doom his national ambitions in the election cycles to come, as his populism reveals itself to be a carefully orchestrated façade by spin doctors and Washington lobbyists.
The vision of the post-America First Republican Party is one of Trumpism without Trump, Project Veritas without James O’Keefe, and Fox News without Tucker Carlson. It is a sanitized movement, one that is globalist-approved, where the passions of the public are never inflamed, and the agenda of managed corporatism continues without abatement. It is a return to the days when a hand-picked Republican candidate would refuse to take the gloves off against a hand-picked Democrat, with both instead opting to read scripts of establishment-approved talking points that never address hot-button issues like immigration, crime, the deep state, and militarism. The post-Trump GOP is a party where any individual who refuses to adhere to the boundaries set up by this rigged system will be subject to a cancel culture as senseless, cruel, and hypocritical as anything the Left could ever dream up.
Unfortunately for the new wannabe DeStablishment, their vision for a post-Trump Republican Party is not taking hold. DeSantis is rapidly losing his luster as he postures against Trump rather than as his state-level equivalent. He is consistently sliding downward in the polls as the public becomes more acquainted with his campaign, and DeSantis cannot hide his aloofness and lack of charisma from the masses. Republican voters demand the genuine article and are not willing to settle for the cheap store-brand knockoff imitation. The politically-motivated persecution of President Trump is only solidifying him as a martyr for freedom, a hero without peers who refuses to back down against obstacles that would make any mere mortal wilt. (RELATED: BRYAN LEIB And GAVIN WAX: Biden’s Botched Foreign Policy Shows Why We Need Donald Trump)
Our battle to defeat conservative cancel culture begins with supporting President Trump’s ambitions in 2024. With his inability to back down, his unwillingness to shy from conflict, his audacious and relentless approach to handling political disputes, and his flair for the theatrical, Trump interjects controversial and necessary speech into the center of the political discourse. He animates the public and agitates the status quo by his very existence. No politician, especially moribund DeSantis under the counsel of the consultant class, brings these abilities to the table. Standing with Trump, no matter the personal cost we may endure, is the only way to captivate the public consciousness and bring shame and ruin upon our civilization’s mortal enemies.
Gavin Wax is a New York-based conservative political activist, commentator, columnist, operative, and strategist. He also serves as the 76th President of the New York Young Republican Club and as an Ambassador for both Turning Point USA & Live Action. You can follow him on Twitter at @GavinWax.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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