By Javier Manjarres
With a laundry list of legislative wins firmly tucked away under his gubernatorial belt, 2024 Republican presidential candidate and Governor Ron DeSantis is arguably the Greatest of All Time (G.O.A.T) when it comes to past Florida governors, but his online messaging team sucks.
In my own opinion, and contrary to what many supporters of former President Donald Trump think, Gov. DeSantis is a very well-rounded and principled presidential candidate.
The problem DeSantis is having with voters across the nation is that he is running in a contested presidential primary race against a very popular former sitting U.S. president.
This has never happened before.
Second, while DeSantis has put together a really good team of advisors, including Ryan Tyson, James Uthmeier, David Polyansky, Sam Cooper, and Marc Reichelderfer, his communications and online team continue to be the weakest link in his political “full armor of God” presidential campaign.
While communication advisors like Lindsey Curnotte and Bryan Griffin have done a very good job promoting and staffing DeSantis, Andrew Romeo and Christina Pushaw have managed to allow themselves to be taken off message, and have continued to embarrass DeSantis with their knuckleheaded and bird-brained statements on social media.
Paper Tiger Pushaw
Pushaw, who recently ran for dear life after Laura Loomer confronted her at the Florida Freedom Summit, has become a huge liability for DeSantis, and even though DeSantis had reeled her in for making ill-advised social media posts, she is still on staff and appears to have been back to her old ways.
Loomer calls Pushaw a "paper tiger," accusing her of hiding behind a keyboard, and for helping to destroy DeSantis's online presence.
"When is he going to drop out? He’s polling at 8% nationally thanks to you. He can credit you for completely destroying his online influencer operation," said Loomer.
MUST WATCH:
.@RonDeSantis’s Campaign Rapid Response Director @ChristinaPushaw Got LOOMERED at the @FloridaGOP Freedom Summit today where DeSantis and President Trump are both speaking. I got her right as her boss was about to take the stage. She was slacking in the corner.
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 4, 2023
If DeSantis loses his race, regardless of how large of a margin he loses by, Pushaw will be seen as being a major contributing factor for his demise.
Pushaw was managed to infuriate and offend every day Republican voters not just the "Magadonians" that make up a large portion of President Trump's base of support.
Just look at the really stupid move to create the now-scrubbed Signal “War Room Creative Ideas.”
Pushaw runs the DeSantis’s War Room” on “X” and DeSantis defended her actions of using anonymous online accounts and “influencers” to disseminate anti-Trump political propaganda.
The campaign’s director of rapid response, Christina Pushaw, told staffers to create more videos and sent content to anonymous accounts that were allied with the campaign.
In one case, Pushaw shared a clip of Trump at a Fox News town hall and asked if the group knew “any Anons who might want it.”
She added, “if we post it or a named influencer posts it, it might get noted.”
These are the same tactics DeSantis zombies, many of whom are aligned with Pushaw, have been bitching and moaning about, and have accused Trump influencers of indulging in.
Does DeSantis also condone Pushaw’s recent and idiotic attempt to dig at Trump at the expense of a Holocaust survivor?
In response to a CNN story about a woman who was sentenced to 51 months in prison for stealing $2.8 million from the Holocaust survivor, Pushaw tweeted, “Trump 2028 campaign is gonna hire her when she gets out.”
Pushaw’s tweet appears to be an attempt to jab President Trump regarding the tens of millions of dollars his Save America Super PAC has spent on the former president’s legal fees and the legal fees of others.
Tasteless.
The morning after we posted on Pushaw dumb move, several close donors and supporters of Trump called us to gripe about her lack of tact by posting the remark.
Both donors questioned why she hasn’t been fired.
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Romeo, who has the personality and demeanor of a flaccid turnip, leads DeSantis’s communication shop.
The bucks stops with him.
Considering that DeSantis’s communications team has a combined political experience of about two months, its not hard to understand how they keep embarrassing DeSantis.
Take Romeo’s most recent post on “X.”
Congratulations to Donald Trump on securing the Koch endorsement. Like clockwork, the pro-open borders, pro-jail break bill establishment is lining up behind a moderate who has no mathematical pathway of defeating the former president. Every dollar spent on Nikki Haley's candidacy should be reported as an in-kind to the Trump campaign. No one has a stronger record of beating the establishment than Ron DeSantis, and this time will be no different.
Romeo is “bigly” mad and appears to have his size 36 waist tighty whities all twisted in a bunch, and has been triggered by the Koch endorsement of former Ambassador Nikki Haley.
In the past, Koch Industries, which once employed Pushaw, was in lock step with DeSantis and supported his ascension in politics.
What changed?
Well, it wasn’t DeSantis that changed, it was most-likely his campaign mistakes, reboots, and the hiring of amateurish scrubs for mouthpieces that made Koch pivot to Haley and away from DeSantis.
Donors like Koch like to win and try to back a candidate they feel can win. Before they believed DeSantis could win, that is not the case now.
In addition to that dumb social media post, whoever is posting on behalf of DeSantis (presumably taking orders from Romeo) is making DeSantis sound weak, ineffective, and off message.
One of DeSantis’s recent posts on “X” accuses former President Trump of giving “the GOP a culture of losing” and focused on exacting “personal vendettas,” which appears to be a desperate attempt to blame recent election day losses on Trump.
The RNC and Ronna McDaniels are to blame for falling short over the past few of elections.
Remember, the buck stops with the boss. McDaniels is the boss.
What would the late George Steinbrenner do if one of his Yankee managers continued losing games?
Steinbrenner would say, “You’re Fired!”
Personal Vendetta Politics
As “personal vendettas” are concerned, DeSantis is the master of those.
Look no further than how his executive office treats elected officials who have endorsed Trump over their boss.
For example, elected officials like Reps. Greg Steube, Cory Mills, Byron Donalds, and Brian Mast, are never invited to DeSantis events that are held in their respective districts.
Just a week ago, Rep. Mast told The Floridian than DeSantis had an recent event in his district but that he was not invited to attend.
Rep. Steube also appears to have received the same cold shoulder from DeSantis.
Before Republican members of Congress endorsed Trump for president, DeSantis would invite these lawmakers to attend and participate in his press event.
Just three weeks before he endorsed Trump for president in early April , Rep. Donalds attended a DeSantis event in Fort Myers to update the media on the ongoing Hurricane Ian clean-up effort.
That was the last time DeSantis invited Donalds to any event in his congressional district,
The Iowa caucuses are less than two months away and polls show Trump trouncing DeSantis, Haley, and the rest of the field.
Polls are polls, so anything could happen. DeSantis has garnered a couple major Iowa endorsements that could help him close the seemingly insurmountable lead Trump currently enjoys.
Don’t discount Haley, who is right there just about event with DeSantis in second place.
Javier Manjarres is based in Miami/Fort Lauderdale and is a nationally renowned award-winning political journalist, author, and Publisher of The Floridian.
