Sleazeball hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin fancies himself a political king-maker. One of the richest crooks in the world, his name became widely known in 2012 when he whined in an interview that the rich don’t have enough control over government. He was behind Scott Walker’s, Jeb Bush’s, Marco Rubio’s and Rick Scott’s still-born presidential bids and when he failed— despite spending a fortune— to get his candidate past the GOP gubernatorial primary in Illinois, he moved from Chicago back to Florida (where he had already contributed $5 million to DeSantis for Governor). He bought multimillion dollar homes in Palm Beach ($450 million), Star Island ($95 million) and Coral Gables ($45 million). Don’t think he only backs Republicans— although he mostly does. Sometimes he finds a conservative Democrat corrupt enough to get behind. He was Rahm Emanuel’s biggest financier, for example.
Yesterday, Maggie Haberman reported that, sensing another loser, he may be backing away from Meatball Ron. He slowed down touting DeSantis— “he has a tremendous record as governor of Florida, and our country would be well served by him as president”— and is keeping his cards closer to the vest. She wrote that the two got together— for a one on one with no staffers— in the past 2 weeks “which came as Griffin has taken issue in private conversations with some of DeSantis’ policy moves and pronouncements. In particular… Griffin was deeply troubled by DeSantis’ statements that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a ‘territorial dispute’— a remark he later tried to clarify— and that the war was not a vital U.S. interest.”
Griffin is over Trump but isn’t happy with how extreme MAGA DeSantis has become and that he may hedge his bets— giving to DeSantis and looking for someone else who could beat Trump at the same time. Tucker Carlson? Probably not… but “probably not” is not the same as “definately not.”
What Griffin does is being closely watched, after word spread of his unhappiness about how DeSantis had comported himself early this year.
DeSantis’s supporters say there is still a broad appetite— in the donor community and among prospective voters— for a viable Republican alternative to Trump.
“The money has walked,” said Roy Bailey, a Dallas businessman and longtime Republican fund-raiser for Trump. “From my conversations with a lot of people from around the country, it has moved to DeSantis. It is a cold, hard fact.”
Bailey disputed the idea that momentum had shifted away from DeSantis recently.
In the first two weeks of May, DeSantis is set to host a series of small dinners with major donors and supporters from across the country at the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, according to two people with knowledge of his plans.
If DeSantis enters the presidential race as expected, he will be armed with a well-funded super PAC, Never Back Down, which said this month that it had raised $30 million in its first few weeks of fund-raising.
Two-thirds of that money, $20 million, came from a single donor, the Nevada hotel magnate Robert Bigelow, Time magazine reported.
In private conversations, DeSantis’ associates have indicated that they have $100 million in commitments to the super PAC, along with roughly $82 million in a Florida committee that will probably be transferred to Never Back Down.
Still, some donors who had hoped DeSantis could stop Trump have cooled their enthusiasm.
Thomas Peterffy, a prominent conservative donor, also cited Florida’s abortion law in explaining why he was withholding support from DeSantis for now. Peterffy had supported DeSantis in his state campaigns, and according to one person familiar with the event, hosted DeSantis at his house early in his first term as governor. But Peterffy told the Financial Times this month he was holding still, as were some friends.
Some donors have also expressed concern about DeSantis’ pre-campaign strategy. When his allies made clear this year that he would not enter the race before the end of the legislative session in Florida, DeSantis effectively gave Trump three months to define him— and taunt him— before becoming a candidate.
Dan Drezner, also looking the DeSantis bid yesterday, was less conventional, less billionaire donor-centric and more certain that the bubble is deflating. He noted that “it’s hard not to draw two conclusions: a) Trump is cleaning DeSantis’ clock; and b) in doing so Trump is exposing all of DeSantis’ myriad flaws as a presidential candidate. Trump is winning on three levels in his shadow primary against DeSantis. First, to the extent that polls matter this early in the race, Trump has widened the gap between himself and DeSantis since the start of 2023. Second, Trump has out-hustled and out-maneuvered DeSantis on endorsements from elected officials… Third, in outworking DeSantis on endorsements, Trump is also making it easy for the press to explain in excruciating detail all of the ways in which DeSantis is blowing it.”
He noted, as many people have, that “It is worth taking a beat here and pointing out just how difficult it is to be less empathetic than Donald Trump. The 45th president was notoriously awful at demonstrating empathy when he was president. For DeSantis to be even worse at this basic political skill would seem to be impossible, and yet that is what the reportage has consistently revealed. Indeed, DeSantis’ inability to interact with people well has come back to haunt him during his fledgling campaign. As Rolling Stone’s Aswan Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley report, he has left a trail of embittered ex-staffers ready to stab him in the back:
Donald Trump loathes Ron DeSantis for the Florida governor’s “disloyal” challenge to Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party. The former president’s ire, however, is dwarfed by the intense desire harbored by some of Trump’s key aides and allies to see DeSantis politically ruined.
These advisers, lawmakers, and operatives personally know DeSantis or used to work for him. Now, some of them are working to reelect Trump and have brought their intimate knowledge of DeSantis’ operations, and also what makes Trump’s likely 2024 primary rival tick. Just as importantly, some of the Team-DeSantis-turned-Team-Trump contingent have talked to the ex-president about how best to relentlessly mess with DeSantis, assuring Trump that the Florida governor is uniquely “insecure” and “sensitive,” and that it’s easy to get in his head, two such sources who’ve spoken to Trump tell Rolling Stone.
It’s one of the reasons why the open political warfare between Trump and DeSantis is only expected to get nastier in the coming months. “If Ron thinks the last couple months have been bumpy, he’s in for a painful ride,” says a third source, who used to be on Team DeSantis and is now in the Trump orbit.
This person continues, “The nature of the conversations among the people who used to work for Ron is just so frequently: ‘OK, how can we destroy this guy?’ It is not at all at a level that is normal for people who hold the usual grudges against horrible bosses. It’s a pure hatred that is much, much purer than that … People who were traveling with Ron everyday, who worked with him very closely over the years, to this day joke about how it was always an open question whether or not Ron knew their names … And that’s just the start of it.”
Drezner emphasized that “A recurring theme in DeSantis coverage is the degree to which DeSantis burns through staff and generated resentment among them. It’s little wonder, therefore, that polling shows that by GOP voters give Trump a 14 point edge over DeSantis when asked which politician cares more about voters. Not even DeSantis’s ability to govern is working for him right now. GOP state legislators are grumbling to Politico about how DeSantis is exhausting them. CNN reports that his presidential aspirations contrast with his inability to do normal governor stuff… What is amazing about all of this is that polling also suggests Republican voters might prefer DeSantis’ political message. According to Axios, that WSJ poll revealed that, ‘most Republican primary voters say fighting woke ideology in schools and businesses is more important to them than protecting Medicare and Social Security from cuts.’ That is a DeSantis message far more than a Trump message. And yet, other polling shows that GOP voters love Trump way more than they care about any particular policy platform.”
What does this all tell us? It’s worth remembering that at this point in 2003 John Kerry was flailing. Similarly, in 2007, John McCain was flailing. DeSantis has time to turn things around.
At the same time, what also seems clear is just how badly Trump has screwed up the GOP. He is popular among Republicans and reviled by everyone else. GOP elites who want to move past Trump thought they had their dream candidate in DeSantis. Under the hot glare of the media and a bare-knuckled primary opponent, however, DeSantis has melted into the consistency of pudding. It seem hard to believe that any of the other entrants into the race will pose a serious threat to Trump.
It seems increasingly likely that the Republican Party will nominate for the third straight time a man incapable of winning the votes of a majority of Americans. His closest challenger looks weaker by the day. So does the GOP.
