Trump vs. DeSantis, Round 1: Who’s a Groomer?

By David Corn  February 18, 2023

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Gov. Ron DeSantis at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida on May 8, 2019. Evan Vucci/AP

A few weeks ago, I wrote that there was good reason for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to take a pass on the 2024 presidential contest. If he leaps into the race, he will immediately be in a messy mudwrestling match with Donald Trump, who excels at dirty fighting and gutter-tussling. How to win such a battle and emerge with a degree of dignity will be a profound challenge. Moreover, should any Republican beat Trump in the GOP primaries and deny him the nomination, it’s a good bet Trump will claim the results were rigged and spend the general election denigrating the nominee and the Republican establishment (RINOs!), encouraging his millions of loyalists not to donate to or vote for the triumphant GOP candidate. In other words, if a Republican vanquishes Trump, he or she will then have to run in the fall campaign against both the Democratic standard-bearer and Trump. That will be quite a task.

Nikki Haley doesn’t seem too worried about this. The former South Carolina governor who opposed Trump in 2016 and then became his UN ambassador entered the Republican presidential sweepstakes this week. (More on her below in Dumbass Comment of the Week.) But even though DeSantis is still biding his time, recently he—and the rest of us—were given a taste of the vicious clash that will come if he follows Haley into the maelstrom, with Team Trump and Team DeSantis arguing over a nasty matter: Who’s the pedophile?

Not surprisingly, Trump delivered the opening salvo. On his Truth Social platform, he reposted a photograph that showed a young DeSantis—who was then a private school teacher—drinking and carousing with several female students. The caption: “Here is Ron DeSanctimonious grooming high school girls with alcohol as a teacher.” Trump added, “That’s not Ron, is it? He would never do such a thing!” (Previous news reports have noted that DeSantis was notorious at the school for socializing with students.)

This Trump hit appeared calculated to strike at a strength DeSantis presumably has within far-right circles: DeSantis has waged war on the LGBTQ community and bolstered the conservative effort to conflate gay rights with so-called “grooming,” a term used dastardly by the far right to link homosexuality and pedophilia.

Action triggers reaction. As Media Matters notes in a good rundown of this squabble, “Following Trump’s post, conservative figures supporting DeSantis were quick to turn the accusation back at Trump, citing reports of his connections to disgraced pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his long history of reported abuse and inappropriate comments against girls and women.” As this liberal watchdog group points out,

The Post Millennial’s Ian Miles Cheong tweeted, “Trump is falsely accusing DeSantis of pedophilia. It is only fair to point out the fact that he traveled on Epstein’s Lolita Express seven times. It is also fair to point out that Trump lied about the number of times he traveled on that plane.”…

Conservative writer Pedro Gonzalez posted a thread (which was promptly retweeted by the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh) citing numerous incidents connecting Trump to Epstein and other examples of actual grooming, tweeting, “Trump, who was friends with Jeff Epstein, suggests DeSantis is a groomer...DeSantis is prosecuting the capture of leftist institutions in Florida. Trump is posting about Stormy Daniels and calling other people groomers when there are images of him with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell everywhere.”

Tiana Low, a commentator for the conservative Washington Examiner, slammed Trump for promoting a “conspiracy theory” and insinuating that “the Florida family man is a sexual predator,” calling this “hypocrisy of the highest order, coming from a serial philanderer accused of rape and more.”

DeSantis did not immediately engage, but his press secretary retweeted a tweet from Cheong that contained a video in which DeSantis declared people should “be held accountable” for spreading misinformation. In response to a reporter’s question about the Trump post, DeSantis did remark, “I'd just say this. I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden…I don't spend my time trying to smear other Republicans."

There was much more back-and-forth on the right between Trumpers and DeSantis-backers that played out on social media and in the right-wing media. Catturd, a right-wing online influencer, called Cheong “a lying POS” for referring to Trump’s links to Epstein. Cheong called Catturd “a POS for defending [Trump] for falsely accusing DeSantis of pedophilia.”

Yes, there literally was a cat(turd) fight on the right over this. And it was all sparked by one Trump post that boosted a post from a Truth Social user that you and I have never heard of. This was a demonstration of how easily and eagerly Trump can and will resort to vile tactics—and how he can turn a political fight into an ugly and foul cage match. And remember, this was merely a preseason scuffle. But if the Trump-DeSantis face-off begins with charges and countercharges of pedophilia—which has become the preferred smear of the right—it boggles the mind to think of where a battle for the nomination between these two men will head. How dark, how low can it go?

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

Of Chinese Balloons and Chinese History

During the Great Chinese Balloon Crisis of 2023, it was striking to see how quickly hawks demanded military action and appeared eager for confrontation with China. This brought home one of the basic fault lines of US foreign policy: China presents a host of challenges for the United States (and other nations) on a variety of fronts and most of us know so little about China, its past or its present. As it happens, while we were watching the sky, I was reading a wonderful new book about China called Fragile Cargo: The World War II Race to Save the Treasures of China’s Forbidden City, by Adam Brookes, a former BBC News correspondent in China. The book tells the gripping, true-life story of a Monuments Men–like operation in China to protect over 63,000 pieces of that nation’s most precious artwork and antiquities during the barbarous Japanese invasion of China, which began after World War I and continued through the end of the next World War. This yearslong effort mounted by dedicated and courageous Chinese scholars and curators entailed transporting 20,000 or so crates—by boat, train, and truck—across much of central and southern China through perilous terrain, hiding the prized goods in caves at times, and relocating them when Japanese troops and bombers closed in. It’s a tale of derring-do and devotion to culture and history.

All this Indiana Jones–like action takes place against a historical backdrop that traverses centuries, across various dynasties, the rise and fall of the Chinese republic in the early 20th century, the catastrophic war against Japan, the brutal civil war between the forces of Gen. Chiang Kai-shek and the army of Mao Zedong, and the subsequent communist takeover. Brookes artfully delivers an important history lesson while providing a rip-roaring adventure yarn. Reading the book reminded me of how unaware I was of the basics of Chinese history. The Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the Rape of Nanjing, the war between the KMT and the commies, the Cultural Revolution—yeah, I know a little about some of that. But not much. And I certainly had no grasp of the overall sweep of Chinese history that has led to the present moment. I doubt many of the politicians and pundits who were howling during the balloon hubbub do, either. This calls to mind the war-fever days that preceded the Bush-Cheney administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was evident that the cheerleaders for war did not know much about the nation they intended to conquer. Ask them to explain the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’ite—they couldn’t.

I’m not saying that today’s China hawks are eager for an all-out military conflict with China—though some might be. Or that knowing what happened in the Qing Dynasty can inform the policy options of today. But it does seem obvious that understanding the past can certainly be useful for making decisions in the present. Yet, as Brookes notes, Chinese history means little to us in the United States. One example: China’s participation in the fight against fascist Japan in World War II—as an ally of the United States and the Allied powers—has been airbrushed out of our history. “Today,” he writes, “beyond East Asia and outside academia, China’s war is rarely glimpsed in literature, in museums, or in any popular representation. That such a cataclysmic series of events should be so stubbornly absent from our understanding of the war and so little examined asks hard questions of us. How is history made? By whom? Whose interests are served by the privileging of certain stories over others? Whose history matters?”

Dumbass Comment of the Week

We could turn this feature over to Michael Flynn, the QAnonish former national security adviser for Donald Trump. He seems to be in contention every week. Check out this recent paranoid word salad of conspiracy nuttery:

This biological war that has been occurring because of the biological weapon called the Covid vaccines. I don’t say that tongue in cheek. I say that with great intention and with great purpose because these are components of things that we know now for the vaccinations…And God help those who took it for whatever reasons they took it, this was a gain of function capability weaponized and comes out of China. Those components of elements of World War III.

Flynn seems to be asserting that Covid vaccines are biological warfare and part of a third World War. I remain puzzled and frightened that this man was once in charge of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The NRA, no surprise, cannot help itself. On February 11, it tweeted out a meme declaring, “I [heart] GUNS” and asked people to retweet the post.

This was two days before the horrific gun massacre at Michigan State University.

Nikki Haley began her 2024 presidential campaign with a lie. She had once declared she wouldn’t run if Donald Trump sought restoration. Well, that was then. Now she claims she changed her mind because of…the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, inflation, and raucous school board meetings. None of these events, she explained, had happened when she pledged to stay out of the race. Somehow their occurrences render her previous vow irrelevant. There is no sense to this. But Haley, a notorious flip-flopper who went from being a Never Trumper in 2016 to working for Trump as UN ambassador, had to say something. So she came up with this poppycock.

The judges considered this bogus explanation a possible winner but decided to award Haley the prize for another comment.

Her first presidential campaign rally opened with a prayer from Pastor John Hagee, the longtime leader of a Texas megachurch. That name might sound familiar to you. During the 2008 campaign, his endorsement of John McCain turned into a kerfuffle. Hagee, as I noted in American Psychosis, had a long history of anti-Catholic bigotry. He had denigrated the Catholic Church as “the great whore” and a “false cult system” and claimed that the pope was the Antichrist. He had attributed Hitler’s antisemitism to his education at a Catholic school. Hagee also was a homophobe who asserted that Hurricane Katrina was the act of a vengeful God to prevent “a homosexual parade” scheduled in New Orleans. He also claimed that Islam was a faith of violence, and that those who follow the Qur’an “have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews.” When the Catholic League called on McCain to renounce Hagee, McCain refused. It was only after a news story reported that Hagee had once preached that Hitler and the Holocaust had been part of God’s plan to drive the Jews from Europe to Palestine that McCain disavowed Hagee.

Yet for Haley, Hagee was no problem. After he spoke at her rally, she praised him with this comment: “To Pastor Hagee, I still say I want to be you when I grow up."

For embracing and amplifying an evangelical bigot who had previously proved himself to be a political liability on Day One of her presidential crusade, Haley won the week. 

The Mailbag

Perhaps one of the most pressing questions raised in the Mailbag in recent weeks was whether Warren Zevon would have wanted to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In a recent issue, responding to the much-belated HOF nomination of Zevon, I penned an appreciation of Zevon, one of my favorite songwriters. In a reply, reader Bob Ross took me to task for awarding any credibility to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, deriding it as a fatuous commercial “joke” and insisting Zevon “would take no great satisfaction in his induction, let alone his nomination.” Unfortunately, Zevon, who died two decades ago, can’t resolve this dispute. But in a Marshall McLuhan–like situation (see Annie Hall), we have the next best thing.

Crystal Zevon, Zevon’s ex-wife and author of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, an oral history covering Zevon’s life, has weighed in. She wrote:

Thank you so much for the accolades for Warren, and I am heartened to know some of his fans are also your fans. In reading the comments you posted, I wanted to respond to the one who suggested that Warren wouldn’t have dignified his nomination by caring about it. As he was dying, one of his remarks was, “I better die before the Grammy nominations so they might nominate me.” While Warren didn’t walk around bemoaning his lack of recognition, he most definitely appreciated it when it came, and would have welcomed the nomination by the R&RHOF. There was a kind of off-color honor to not having been nominated or inducted for so many years (always the outlaw/outsider), but there is no question that he would be honored to see his standing in the fan votes rising, indicating his music has stood the test of time.

Issue settled.

Other music news: In the last issue, I hailed Joe Henry’s new album, All the Eye Can See. Alas, I neglected to reference his website that promotes this wonderful collection of songs. Here’s the link.

There was plenty of mail about the article in that issue on the Trump-Russia denialists—Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Elon Musk, and Andrew Sullivan—who embraced the misguided article by Jeff Gerth recently published by the Columbia Journalism Review that dismissed Moscow’s attack on the 2016 and Trump’s efforts to aid and abet that assault and that boosted Trump’s phony narrative of a “Russia hoax.”

Craig Jones emailed:

Keep up the great work exposing ignorance and hold on to your sense of humor having to respond to the likes of Musk, Taibbi, et. al. Social media in this country needs more intellectual regulation to keep us from sliding backwards and returning to the dark ages. Thanks for your thoughtful discourse during these living the nightmare times.

Glad to be of service. Still, I am unsure how we can regulate social media to stop or curtail disinformation—especially disinformation that serves the interests of demagogues (here and abroad) and that undermines American democracy.

Anand Arupo showed that persuasion is possible:

Excellent piece, though sorry to see Taibbi and Greenwald were in the wrong, as I thought they were two people I could trust. Thank you for digging out the real truth.

Kelly Cameron shared this observation about “Trump ‘collusion’ (or whatever word you want to use) with Russia”:

I have always thought that the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower was incredibly damning, even though the Russians involved may not have been able to do much on their own. One point that is reported frequently, and you mentioned, but I think doesn't get enough attention is Don Jr.'s reply to the e-mail [leading to the meeting]. The incoming message referred, as you note, to Russia's efforts to help Trump. To which Jr. did not reply, "Russia's effort to help my father? What do you mean? I've never heard of anything of the kind! What's more, I don't understand why they would want to help him. He's been very clear about his America First agenda. Why would Russia support that? My dad will be very tough on Russia. Just you wait and see!" No, that was not how he replied…

I used to read Greenwald (and for that matter Taibbi) and also had great respect for Snowden's work in exposing US government wrongdoing, but Glenn and Matt seem to have lost their minds, or perhaps have discovered that the money is greener on the other side. 

Richard Robbins raised a good point:

Great post. One sentence that caught me was, “No one should be allowed to debate the Russia controversy without reading this.” Apart from a tiny number of journalists and wonks, nobody (myself included) is ever going to read a 96- page report. If the only people who can credibly counter misinformation have this much homework, it’s all not guaranteed that the misinformation will prevail!

I certainly don’t expect the average reader to plow through this report. But as people evaluate the claims of the Trump-Russia denialists (aka Russia hoax hoaxers), they ought to at least ask whether these folks have bothered to read this document. By the way, in my article, I noted that I had asked Musk, Greenwald, and Sullivan to give it a look and then have a serious conversation and that they had not taken up this cordial invitation. That’s still the case.

Several readers asked about what drives the Russia hoax hoaxers to deny reality. Phil Loubere was one:

Thank you for your good reporting on this story. I fail to understand what motivates your detractors, and why they are intent on defending the former president in the face of overwhelming evidence of his culpability. I'm baffled. 

I’ve given up trying to discern the motive of the Trump-Russia denialists. Is this contrarianism running amok? Do they hate Hillary Clinton so much they don’t want to acknowledge she was the victim of a Russian attack that succeeded? Are they such foes of the national security establishment that they must champion the opposite of any of its conclusions? Have they decided inhabiting this curious lane is good for their standing or good for business? I don’t know.

Rick Davis emailed:

As always this was a very fair deep and wide take down of the critics. I’ve always read Our Land for free. But no more. I bought a subscription. And will buy the book. Keep up the smart work writing and speaking out for those of us who wish we had your skills to counter all the mis and disinformation out there. 

Another satisfied customer. Thanks, Rick.

Readers also responded to my review of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

Craig Berrington wrote:

Excellent essay. Thanks. But I thought of Bill Clinton, not Trump. When Clinton was sailing through rough seas, he always went to the country with State of the Union speeches that were very, very long and jam-packed with proposals that the Washington commentariat derided as small bore. They weren’t small bore to American families. I don’t think Trump ever proposed, let alone fought for, any of the things you pulled from Biden’s list. Trump appealed to hate.

Yes, that’s true. The similarity regarding Trump I noted was that Biden was telling the public that he understood the resentment they feel being screwed over by powerful economic forces, such as Corporate America. This echoed Trump’s claim to recognize popular anger. Of course, Biden gives a damn what happens to these folks, and Trump doesn’t.

Glenn Ivers Sr. had an idea:

Biden is exactly the president we need in these times we are living in. When so many seek to divide our country and demonize those who don't agree with them, Biden has the skills, experience, and empathy necessary to "Make America Whole Again." Thought of that slogan this morning. Seems particularly apt. Don't you agree?

I agree that Biden is trying to reach out to voters with a communal message, while the Trumpish Republicans deploy divisive and mean-spirited rhetoric to whip up their base. (See Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee’s dystopic response to the State of the Union speech.) But I’m not sure that slogan is going to win the day. Was America ever truly “whole”?

Larry Senechal emailed:

The challenge for Biden and Congressional Democrats is to stay on message and remain unified and retain their collective spines. Biden in particular. He doesn’t do himself any favors by making a good speech and then retreating to his office leaving the Republicans an opportunity to command the media’s attention with their dystopian view of our country’s future. If you want the public’s attention and to keep them engaged, you must address them continuously in keeping with the reality of our 24/7/365 news cycle. TFG recognized this and had it down to a science. And before him and the digital age, so did FDR and later JFK both with his regular press conferences and great rhetorical speeches. To wit: Scranton Joe has to come out of his hidey hole every week and to address the American people channeling Harry “Give ‘em Hell” Truman. Otherwise, all they hear are GOP complaints, whining and fear mongering.

As I noted, political messaging only works if it is repeated to the point of ad nauseum. Biden and the Democrats need to be constantly engaged in the fight to have a chance to win it.

Nancy Krempa had a message for Moxie:

I love the nighttime pic of Moxie, the world's cutest poodle. And she's quite right, dogs are never melancholy, unless you forget their treats. And even then, they'll most likely give you sour looks, but not melancholic gazes!

Speaking of which….

MoxieCam™

“Moxie, I was gone for a few days. Did you miss me?”

“I thought you would never come back.”

“But I always do. I thought you were good at pattern recognition.”

“I think you think I’m smarter than I am.”

“That’s a pretty smart thought for a dog.”

“See?”

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

February 14, 2023: The Trump-Russia denialists still can’t handle the truth; American Psychosis: an update; Joe Henry’s stunning new album; and more.

February 11, 2023: Joe Biden’s Americans First agenda; an arrested FBI agent and a mysterious Albania lobbying campaign; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Ben Shaprio); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

February 7, 2023: Justice for Warren Zevon; remembering the Myanmar coup; the great love story in HBO’s The Last of Us; and more.

February 4, 2023: How we got the Santos story and what comes next; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Rob Portman); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

January 31, 2023: The bull of John Durham; George Santos: it never stops; nominating Navalny; Judith Owen’s brassy Come On & Get It; and more.

January 28, 2023: Remembering Victor Navasky, the unflappable ringmaster of the Nation; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Julie Kelly); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

January 24, 2023: Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and the MAGA perversion of history; the right-wing disinformation machine and Hunter Biden; David Crosby, RIP; and more.

January 21, 2023: Is it getting harder to enjoy action thrillers?; Santos and a big-money con; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Donald Trump Jr.); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

January 18, 2023: Trump Derangement Syndrome on the right; nominating Navalny; the weirdness and ghostliness of Tar; and more.

January 14, 2023: Why Ron DeSantis shouldn’t—or won’t—run for president; the many faces of the George Santos scandal; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Ryan Zinke); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

January 10, 2023: Our split-screen America; Wakanda Forever and Babylon (thumbs down) and The Fabelmans and Armageddon Time (thumbs up); and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.