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   XPost: talk.politics.guns, alt.atheism   
   From: nowomr@protonmail.com   
      
   Former President Donald Trump has taken aim at Ron DeSantis dozens of   
   times as the Florida governor has stepped off the presidential campaign   
   trail to manage his state’s crisis response to Hurricane Idalia.   
      
   The near-Category 4 Hurricane was a once-in-a-century storm to hit   
   Florida’s Big Bend and left severe flooding and billions of dollars in   
   its wake.   
      
   DeSantis arrived back in Tallahassee from Iowa on Saturday to manage the   
   state’s response, which has been widely praised, before the storm made   
   landfall on Wednesday morning.   
      
   Early in the week, Trump said that rumors were “strong in political   
   circles that Ron DeSanctimonious, whose Presidential run is a shambles,   
   and whose poll numbers have absolutely crashed, putting him 3rd and 4th   
   in some states, will be dropping out of the Presidential race in order   
   to run, in Florida, against Rick Scott for Senate.”   
      
   DeSantis’ team responded, “This is fake news. Clearly, Donald Trump and   
   his army of consultants are panicked about @RonDeSantis’ winning debate   
   performance and the strong momentum that has followed.”   
      
   Once the hurricane hit, DeSantis’ political operation largely went quiet   
   as the governor focused on responding to the storm.   
      
   Trump targeted DeSantis dozens of times on social media by posting   
   claims, videos, or online poll numbers that showed Trump leading   
   DeSantis, who is in second place, in the Republican Party presidential   
   primary.   
      
   Trump accused DeSantis of having “unnecessarily approved a 20% hike in   
   Florida Electricity Rates, the largest in history (by far!).”   
      
   Jeremy Redfern, press secretary in the governor’s office, responded,   
   “The Public Service Commission, an arm of the state legislative branch,   
   is responsible for setting rates for the states Investor-Owned Utilities   
   (IOUs). The Governor does not have a role in setting rates for utilities   
   in the state. Additionally, energy costs have been rising since Biden   
   took office and killed domestic energy production.”   
      
      
      
   As people in Florida dealt with the fallout of the hurricane, Trump   
   posted about how he got more votes than DeSantis in Florida, though   
   DeSantis was on a midterm ballot and Trump was on a presidential ballot.   
      
   “Ron DeSanctimonious is always talking about the number of votes he got   
   in Florida,” Trump posted Thursday in a video. “He doesn’t say that I   
   got a record 1.1 million more votes than him!”   
      
   Trump also posted a link to a Daily Mail article titled: “EXCLUSIVE: Ron   
   DeSantis $50 million super PAC CLOSES after donors were spooked by   
   ‘rookie s*** mistakes.'”   
      
   “Wow! ‘A Super PAC set up to back Ron DeSanctimonious with $50 Million,   
   is closing as donors have backed out -0 while its founder said the   
   Florida Governor’s campaign is guilty of rookie mistakes, and he will   
   now back Donald Trump.’ Daily Mail, by Morgan Phillips,” Trump wrote.   
   “Thank you to John Thomas, the highly respected Republican strategist!”   
      
   Rob Pyers, an expert in FEC filings, responded to the Daily Mail article   
   by mocking the defunct PAC as illegitimate. “I guess it’s a more eye-   
   catching headline than ‘Unauthorized DeSantis ScamPAC that paid its   
   founder 75% of the $1,621 it raised folds, will now support Trump with   
   the $57 dollars it has left,'” Pyers wrote.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)