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Is This the Weirdest Primary Campaign Issue Yet?

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  June 01, 2023 2:15 PM

We've entered what may be "peak primary" as a result of the Republican presidential primary involving not just a back-and-forth between how former and potentially future President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) handled COVID-19 pandemic, but with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) weighing in. It's only been a little over a week since DeSantis formally declared though, and it continues to get weird. 

On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a press release that highlighted a Truth Social post from Trump claiming that "'Rob' DeSanctimonious wants to change his name, again," as he continued to muse on the pronunciation of DeSantis' name. "He gets very upset when people, including reporters, don’t pronounce it correctly. Therefore, he shouldn’t mind, DeSanctimonious?"

The Trump campaign wasn't the only one to spend so much time on such an odd topic, though. As our friends at Twitchy highlighted, and rightfully mocked, Axios had more than one of their writers cover the topic. One of them, Alex Thompson, even came armed with examples in a whole lengthy thread shared to Twitter, including with the claim that such a "quandry... adds to questions by by many [unnamed] GOP leaders and donors about whether the governor is ready for the scrutiny of a presidential race." 

The article does cite the Trump campaign. "Ron DeSantis is a phony who can’t decide how to pronounce his name," Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told Axios. "If you can’t get your name right, how can you lead a country?"

Harrington retweeted the Axios article.

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DeSantis was asked about and responded to a question about his name during a radio interview with Jack Heath. "I think it's so petty. I think it's so juvenile. I don't think that's what voters want," DeSantis said, before going after Trump even more directly. "And honestly, I think that his conduct, which he's been doing for years now, I think that's one of the reasons he's not in the White House now, because I think he alienated too many voters, for things that really don't matter. So I don't get in the gutter on any of that."

Trump's main primary foe then went on to bring up more policy orientated matters, including handling of COVID. "Now, we do have substantive differences. And I think President Trump did a lot of great things. And I still give him credit for for the great things he did. But he's attacking me on policy where we have a disagreement, and I'm the one that's in the right on this," he went on to offer. "For example, he’s saying Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York handled COVID better than Florida did under my leadership, and yet people fled Cuomo’s lock downs to come to Florida by the tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, Florida boomed as a result of being one of the nation's foremost freedom zones," DeSantis continued, taking the opportunity to tout the high amount of visitors his state has taken in. 

DeSantis also went on to speak to how the "name calling" is not a winning issue and that it is "a distraction," as he spoke to the need of winning over those voters. "I think it turns off the voters, how are we going to be able to win independent voters in New Hampshire and other key states if we're going to be engaged in that type of that type of back and forth? I think the voters are sick of it. I think they want to hear about the problems facing the country and how you can deliver results for them," DeSantis offered. 

Thompson included the interview clip in his thread.

Not only is it such a bizarre thing for the press to focus on, but as Dana Loesch--who was the one to refer to the COVID issue as "peak primary"--pointed out, there are plenty of real scandals affecting President Joe Biden.

This includes the ever pressing issues with Hunter Biden, who is using the Second Amendment as a defense from his gun charge. 

What makes the narrative over name pronunciation even more curious is that Axios and Thompson have engaged in serious reporting, including when it comes to explaining Trump's claims about DeSantis' voting record on the First Step Act. He, like many other Republicans, voted for an early version of the bill when he was in Congress. The ultimate version that Trump signed into law, had the support of far fewer Republicans, and was signed into law in December 2018, after DeSantis had already left Congress. DeSantis has said if elected he would work to repeal that law, which he called a "jailbreak" bill. 

Nevertheless, such a report does seem to help Trump a little more than is necessary.

As wild as this all may seem, we're still only about one week in and we still have several months to go before the to-be-determined Iowa Republican caucus.