Ron DeSantis Can’t Stop Copying Trump

Ron DeSantis just can’t seem to drop the wannabe Trump routine. 

The Florida governor will stage an Apprentice-style “extensive vetting” process to determine a replacement for Senator Marco Rubio, who is expected to serve as Donald Trump’s secretary of state pending confirmation. 

“We have already received strong interest from several possible candidates … with a selection likely made by the beginning of January,” DeSantis wrote on X. “Florida deserves a Senator who will help President Trump deliver on his election mandate, be strong on immigration and border security, take on the entrenched bureaucracy and administrative state, reverse the nation’s fiscal decline, be animated by conservative principles, and has a proven record of results.”

DeSantis’s pick will serve until 2026.  Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez, Attorney General Ashley Moody, former Florida House Speaker Jose Oliva, and chief of staff James Uthmeier have all been floated as possible replacements for Rubio.

This is yet another example of DeSantis’s weak Trump impersonation, a futile attempt to sell himself to the MAGA base. He took the same position on Ukraine as Trump, has railed against critical race theory and transgender children, claimed that slavery was beneficial to personal development, and even tried standing like the president-elect. 

And yet DeSantis has received nothing for his mimicry, not even Cabinet position. The governor continues to fade into the GOP ether as conservatives continue to choose the real thing.

Donald Trump is going after Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, weeks after she published a preelection poll that found Kamala Harris had “leapfrogged” the former president 47 to 44 percent in Iowa.

“A totally Fake poll that caused great distrust and uncertainty at a very critical time. She knew exactly what she was doing,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Sunday.

“Thank you to the GREAT PEOPLE OF IOWA for giving me such a record breaking vote, despite possible ELECTION FRAUD by Ann Selzer and the now discredited ‘newspaper’ for which she works. An investigation is fully called for!”

Selzer’s poll had anticipated that Harris would lead Trump by three points in the state. In reality, he won Iowa by 13 points, making for a 16-point error. Until now, Selzer & Co. had been considered the gold standard of polling in the country.

Some have speculated that the Selzer poll’s failure to align with the actual results was because the poll had too many Democrats and college-educated voters. While Selzer’s philosophy of not correcting for these factors has worked in previous election years, this time it accounted for major differences from the outcome of the presidential election in the key swing state.

Trump shared a link to an op-ed Selzer wrote Sunday in The Des Moines Register, which had published her Iowa poll, announcing that she would be moving on from polling altogether.

“Over a year ago I advised the Register I would not renew when my 2024 contract expired with the latest election poll as I transition to other ventures and opportunities,” Seltzer wrote. “Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course.”

After Iowa was called for Trump, his campaign gloated about the win—and called out the pollster by name. “Starting on Day 1 President Trump and Vice President JD Vance will help to ease costs, secure the border, and protect Social Security for retirees like Ann Selzer,” the campaign said in a statement.

While Selzer’s poll wasn’t an accurate predictor of the outcome in that state, it’s far from illegal for a poll to be wrong, and the president-elect’s penchant for targeting those who publish unflattering things about him is cause for serious concern.

“Welcome to the authoritarian weaponization of the state and waste of taxpayer $ on vanity crusades: Anyone whose work seems to criticize the leader or produce results that he does not like must be investigated,” authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat warned on X.

An authoritarianism scholar sounded alarm bells that Donald Trump’s incoming Cabinet nominees will do far more than usher a new conservatism into the federal government. Instead, they’ll challenge the system to the point of rendering federal agencies practically ineffective and vulnerable to complete dismantling.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Yale history professor Timothy Snyder insisted that Trump’s nominees to lead the executive branch aren’t just “poor choices in the traditional sense.”

“Each of them individually is historically bad,” said Snyder. “But taken together, these are not people who are going to be bad at their jobs in some sort of normal sense. Taken together, these appointments suggest an attempt to actually make the American government dysfunctional, to make it fall apart, to pervert it, to have it do things that it’s not supposed to do until it’s not capable of doing anything at all.”

For instance, Trump’s choice for director of national intelligence, former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, regularly amplifies Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories. Her role would have her oversee 18 intelligence agencies, but critics—even in the House Intelligence Committee—have drawn attention to the danger of her nomination considering her particular affinity for foreign dictators such as Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Responding to a clip of Gabbard from February 2022—shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine—in which the former Democrat claimed that Ukraine should “embrace the spirit of Aloha” and relinquish any military alliances with NATO or Russia, Snyder argued that “it’s not just that these people are not qualified enough.”

“It’s not just that they’re totally unqualified, it’s that they’re anti-qualified. They are qualified to do the opposite of the thing that they are supposed to do,” Snyder said.

“Tulsi Gabbard is talking about a moment when Russian forces are approaching the Ukrainian capital. When Russian assassination squads are attempting to kill the Ukrainian head of state, and she’s advising people that all we have to do is summon up a magic word, and in effect surrender all of Ukraine to Russia,” Snyder continued. “And it’s not naïve. It sounds naïve but it’s not. What it’s doing is trying to prepare the way for more Ukrainian suffering. It’s saying, he who invades is right.”

Donald Trump and his allies have characterized the 2024 election as an overwhelming victory—and a mandate for shock politics, mass deportations, and the transformation of the country’s foreign and domestic policy. There’s just one problem: They didn’t actually win by much. 

CNN’s Harry Enten reports that Trump is now under 50 percent for the popular vote, and his margin is the forty-fourth worst out of 51 presidential elections since 1824. Four Democrats won Senate seats in states that Trump won (Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada), compared to zero in the 2016 and 2020 elections. And while Republicans held on to their House majority, if results hold, their 221–214 margin will be the smallest majority in the 50-state era. 

Trump’s appointments are not going to help with the House’s Republican majority, with many of Trump’s choices being elected GOP members. These include Representatives Elise Stefanik as his U.N. ambassador, Mike Waltz as his national security adviser, and Matt Gaetz (who has already resigned) as his attorney general, among others. 

Republicans will point out that Trump in 2024 became the first GOP presidential candidate to win the popular vote since 2004 and the second since 1988, but he will arrive in office with a narrow majority in the Senate as well—just a three-seat majority if Democratic Senator Bob Casey loses his seat, which he looks likely to.  

Trump will have a hard time passing his legislative agenda in either house of Congress, although some on his team have signaled alternative means of getting what he wants in the form of recess appointments. Trump’s dangerous plan for mass deportations wouldn’t even need congressional approval: He wants to involve the U.S. military by declaring a national emergency. And if Congress wants to stop him on this or any other action, it would take an overwhelming majority, which, no matter how weak his mandate, isn’t likely to happen.  

Yesterday’s “poison” is tomorrow’s presidential Cabinet meal.

Over the weekend, key members of Donald Trump’s incoming administration were photographed eating McDonald’s aboard the president-elect’s private plane, including one member who recently derided Trump for his highly processed diet: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Sitting across from Trump, Kennedy was spotted with a burger, fries, chicken nuggets, and a Coca-Cola, while the MAGA leader smiled for the camera.

This comes after Kennedy’s interview Tuesday with The Joe Polish Show, during which the secretary of health and human services nominee blasted Trump’s diet as “really, like, bad.”

“Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is like just poison,” Kennedy told the show. “You have a choice between—you don’t have the choice, you’re either given KFC or Big Macs. That’s when you’re lucky, and then the rest of the stuff I consider kind of inedible.”

But it’s not just the food that’s the problem. Kennedy also lambasted Trump’s drink options, though his obvious preferences didn’t stop him from partaking with the president-elect.

“And then he [drinks] Diet Coke,” Kennedy told the show. “I was with Dana White the other day … he’s very close to Trump, they’ve had a relationship for 20 years through UFC.

“He said that sometimes he’ll sit through a fight with Trump—and he’s [there for] five hours [during] the fight—and said he has never seen Trump drink a glass of water. Never,” Kennedy said.

The photo op, which ultimately showcases a former independent presidential candidate bending the proverbial knee to Trump’s preferences, doesn’t bode well for the implementation of some of Kennedy’s purported chief policy goals, which include tackling the prevalence of chronic illnesses in the country, such as diabetes and obesity.

Donald Trump confirmed Monday that he’s plotting to use the U.S. military to carry out his massive deportation scheme.

The president-elect shared a post on Truth Social in the early hours of Monday morning that claimed “reports” suggested Trump’s administration was “prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion.”

“TRUE!!!” Trump wrote in response.

Trump’s latest pronouncement comes as Republicans attempt to downplay just how extreme his immigration plans will be.

In an interview Sunday with CNN, House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back on assertions that Trump planned to deport all undocumented immigrants, which could lead to widespread family separation and a significant reduction in the U.S. workforce. Johnson said that the government’s efforts would begin with criminals and terrorists, of which he speculated there were “three or four million people.”

“Begin there, and then see how it transpires,” Johnson said.

Texas Representative Tony Gonzales said Sunday that if the Trump administration were to target undocumented immigrants for deportation, that would mean that the “government has failed us.”

Trump has said that he plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 to expel suspected members of drug cartels from the country without due process, but the reality of Trump’s immigration scheme suggests that the government plans to target more than violent criminals.

White nationalist Stephen Miller, who is expected to serve as White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said that Trump’s immigration plan involves sweeping raids for undocumented immigrants and large detainment camps to stage deportations. Miller also said that Trump planned to target those in the country legally and would revoke legal protections such as birthright citizenship, DACA, and temporary protected status—leaving millions more in danger of being deported.

Trump’s new “border czar,” Tom Homan, said last week that he expected support from the U.S. military and special operations to carry out their immigration blitz.

It’s not just Matt Gaetz. The Trump transition team is worried about another set of heinous allegations tanking one of its most important Cabinet picks.

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump Trump’s first pick for the Department of Defense, was investigated by California police over accusations of sexual assault in 2017.

The alleged assault occurred on the night of October 7 at a hotel Hegseth stayed at while attending the California Federation of Republican Women conference. The allegation to police was made five days later, according to the police report. The woman who accused Hegseth had a bruise on her right thigh.

The allegations, which were unknown to the transition team until shared via complaint, have left them scrambling. “There’s a lot of frustration around this,” an anonymous source close to the situation told The Washington Post. “He hadn’t been properly vetted.”

But on the outside, the future administration is rallying behind the Defense Department nominee. 

“President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his Administration,” said Trump communications chief Steven Cheung. “Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on Day One to Make America Safe and Great Again.” The president-elect himself has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct two dozen times over decades.

Hegseth, a military veteran and former Fox and Friends host, has also made headlines for a questionable tattoo. Hegseth was actually banned from working as a National Guardsman at President Biden’s inauguration after pictures of a tattoo on his bicep reading “Deus Vult” surfaced. Meaning “God wills it,” the term, which originated in the Crusades, has been deeply co-opted by Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and other white Christian nationalist groups. The phrase has been used by January 6 insurrectionists, the white nationalists who rioted in Charlottesville in 2017, and by the man who shot and killed 49 Muslims at a mosque in New Zealand in 2019.  

Hegseth’s own positions could certainly be described as Christian nationalist. 

“Our present moment is much like the 11th Century. We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must,” he wrote in his book American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free. “Arm yourself—metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

Hegseth also despises the idea of women and trans people serving in the military, and is extremely bigoted toward Muslims. Like the sexual assault allegations, he has denied any ties to Christian nationalism, claiming on X that he is the victim of “anti-Christian bigotry.” He actually cites the inauguration banning as what made him realize the military was too “woke” for him. 

“I joined the Army in 2001 because I wanted to serve my country. Extremists attacked us on 9/11, and we went to war,” Hegseth wrote in his book The War on Warriors. “Twenty years later, I was deemed an ‘extremist’ by that very same Army … the military I loved, I fought for, I revered … spit me out.” 

The impact of these allegations, and the tattoos, on Hegseth’s Defense Department nomination remain to be seen.

Elon Musk is starting to clash with Donald Trump’s team on some of the president-elect’s key issues, especially tariffs. 

The Washington Post reports that Musk is trying to persuade Trump regarding Cabinet picks and economic policy, drawing the ire of the president-elect’s other advisers. On Saturday, Musk praised Argentine President Javier Milei in a post on X for cutting tariffs in his country. The central pillar of Trump’s economic program is raising tariffs. 

In another post later on Saturday, Musk endorsed Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team and CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, for the post of treasury secretary over hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, who is in the running for the position. Both posts from Musk aren’t going over well with the rest of Trump’s team. 

“People are not happy,” one person in contact with campaign officials told the Post anonymously. Musk’s posts seemed to reflect that the tech CEO and world’s richest man was acting like a “co-president” and beginning to overstep his role, the person added.

Musk’s praise of Lutnick, for example, came before any public statements from the campaign or any announcements from Trump. Musk also called on his followers to weigh in with their opinion on the Cabinet position, which might send a message that he thinks Trump needs some convincing—or pressure.

There is also friction between Musk and Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, with Axios reporting that the tech mogul thinks Epshteyn, who has pushed for appointments such as Matt Gaetz as attorney general, has too much influence over Trump’s choices. Musk has questioned the qualifications of Epshteyn’s preferred candidates, irking the longtime Trump adviser.  

These disagreements reportedly came to a head last Wednesday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where Musk and Epshteyn had an angry exchange at a dinner table. Musk even accused Epshteyn of leaking details about the Trump transition to the media, which Epshteyn denied.  

If Musk gets into a turf war with other members of Trump’s team as Trump’s new presidential administration takes shape, he already has a big advantage. The tech CEO pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign, and the president-elect has already included Musk in many important meetings, as well as a phone call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy just after the election. Last week, Musk even took part in a private meeting with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York, raising questions of whether it was on Trump’s orders.   

Musk has been photographed with members of Trump’s family too, making it look like he has become part of Mar-a-Lago’s furniture and irking Trump’s advisers and staff. It seems that the world’s richest man has bought his way into Trump’s inner circle and won’t be leaving for the foreseeable future.  

Donald Trump has announced that the next Federal Communications Commission chair would be Brendan Carr, the senior-most Republican on the FCC and a contributor to Project 2025.

“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for free speech, and has fought against the regulatory lawfare that has stifled Americans’ freedoms, and held back our economy,” Trump said in a statement Sunday. The president-elect did not mention Carr’s involvement in Project 2025.

In his Project 2025 chapter, Carr outlined his agenda for the FCC. Carr wrote that one of the goals for Trump’s administration should be reining in Big Tech’s “attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square,” according to Business Insider. Carr suggested that companies be unable to censor content unless it is illegal, allowing consumers to choose their own content filters and fact-checking services.

Carr’s intentions for social media are perhaps best demonstrated by X, which has been transformed into a MAGA misinformation echo chamber by its owner, Elon Musk, who seems to have permanently attached himself to Trump’s side.

Carr also pushed to ban TikTok if its parent company, ByteDance, does not sell its U.S. operations, warning that Americans were receiving their news and information from China.

In addition to addressing Big Tech, Carr also wrote that the FCC should focus on “promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”

House Democrats previously called for an investigation into Carr over his partisan activity, but it did not result in formal action, according to NPR. Carr said he received approval from FCC ethics officials to contribute to the right-wing playbook.

Trump spent months on the campaign trail disavowing Project 2025, an authoritarian policy road map cooked up by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, only to now welcome its architects into the fold.

Last month, Carr railed against Kamala Harris’s surprise appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, calling it “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule” and “biased and partisan conduct.” Trump was offered equal time on NBC, and the FCC said they had “not made any determination regarding political programming rules, nor have we received a complaint from any interested parties.”

Still, Carr took up the bullhorn on behalf of the president who’d appointed him to the FCC in 2017.

FCC rules dictate that only three commissioners can be affiliated with the same political party at any given time, and none can have a financial interest in any commission-related business. The FCC is responsible for regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. Under Trump’s first administration, the FCC repealed net neutrality rules, which were then reinstated this year.

Donald Trump has sweeping plans for his second term, and they include slashing and gutting large parts of the executive branch.

Speaking with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, Trump’s nominated co-chair for the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Vivek Ramaswamy outlined the massive agenda, revealing that the plan is akin to—or possibly more extreme than—the road map offered by Project 2025. Ramaswamy proposed that several government agencies under his helm would be “deleted outright.”

“Are you expecting to close down entire agencies? Like, President Trump has talked about the Department of Education, for example. Are you going to be closing down departments?” Bartiromo asked.

“We expect mass reductions,” said Ramaswamy. “We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright. We expect mass reductions enforced in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expected massive cuts of our federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government.”

And Ramaswamy believes that he and his fellow departmental co-chair, world’s richest man Elon Musk, can expedite those changes by leaning on the highest rungs of the third branch of government: the Supreme Court.

“I think people will be surprised by how quickly we’re able to move with some of those changes, given the legal backdrop the Supreme Court has given us,” Ramaswamy told Fox.

From the Trump administration’s perspective, the executive branch can overstep Congress entirely to swiftly remove agencies such as the Department of Education since they were first enacted by executive action.

“It’s the unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state that was created through executive action,” Ramaswamy said. “It’s going to be fixed through executive action.”

“Think about the Supreme Court’s environment,” he continued. “Over the last several years, they’ve held that many of those regulations are unconstitutional at a large scale. Rescind those regulations, pull those regs back, and then that gives us the industrial logic to then downsize the size of that administrative state.”

After that, DOGE (the agency) would begin examining cuts to the budget. Reminder: Musk promised to trim $2 trillion from the federal budget, which constitutes more than Congress has in discretionary spending, a move that would practically defund the entire executive branch, which doles out funding for the military, national security, and federal agencies.

“And the beauty of all of this is that [it] can be achieved just through executive action without Congress,” Ramaswamy added. “Score some early wins, and then you look at those bigger portions of the federal budget that need to be addressed one by one.”