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DeSantis's Des Moines visit seen as unofficial campaign launch
It’s launch day on Friday, kind of, for Ron DeSantis’s 2024 presidential campaign.
The Republican Florida governor is in Iowa, an important state that will host early primary-season caucuses next year, for two public appearances and a round of meetings with lawmakers and other influential senior party figures.
It’s the clearest sign yet that the rightwing culture warrior is committed to challenge Donald Trump for the party’s nomination, even though he is not expected to declare it formally until after the Florida legislature closes its business in May.
He’ll be at a casino in Davenport, the state fairgrounds in Des Moines, and at the capitol building pressing the flesh in the company of Iowa governor and close ally Kim Reynolds.
His political action committee has a bulging moneybag in excess of $80m by some reports, his self-serving political tome, The Courage to Be Free, is riding high at the New York Times bestselling list, and he’s been wooing a raft of influential senior Republican figures at home in Florida, and on a tour of states including Texas, California, Alabama and New Hampshire.
But not everything in the DeSantis garden is rosy. Politico on Friday takes a look at the growing number of influential Republicans, an assortment of more moderate officials and donors, who are increasingly seeing the two-term governor as another incarnation of Trump himself.
They include Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, who according to Politico had harsh words for DeSantis last month at a Republican donor conference in Austin, Texas.
“[Let’s not] just nominate Trump Lite,” Christie told the gathering.
Christie also reportedly took a dig at DeSantis’s positioning on China and warning that the US risked siding into a proxy war, Politico said.
“Don’t be fooled by false choices” being pushed by “a fellow governor,” Christie said, wondering how “they teach foreign policy in Tallahassee”.
The episode suggests, in Politico’s view, that the moderates’ “Stop Trump” campaign has already widened to encompass DeSantis before he has even declared.
On CNN on Friday, Asa Hutchinson, the Republican former governor of Arkansas, who is mulling his own run, also weighed in.
“We need to have alternatives when it comes to who’s going to represent the Republican party, who’s going to potentially be our next president, and we need to have alternative voices,” he said.
“I’m pleased that I get encouragement for that. We’ll make a decision down the road. But in terms of the chaos that surrounding Donald Trump and his candidacy, that’s not the future of the Republican party. That’s not the leadership that we need in our country.”
As for the two declared Republican candidates, Trump will be in Iowa on Monday. More of him coming up. And Nikki Haley is wrapping up a three-day visit there today.
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Good morning US politics followers! We’ve made it to Friday and our final blog of the week, but there’s plenty still to talk about.
The race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination heats up today, with Florida governor and bestselling author Ron DeSantis visiting Iowa – which will host early caucuses next year – for two public appearances and a round of meetings with lawmakers and other influential senior party figures.
DeSantis, whose self-serving political memoir The Courage to Be Free has supplanted Prince Harry at the top of the New York Times bestsellers list, isn’t expected to formally declare his candidacy for at least another couple of months. But analysts see today’s events as the unofficial campaign launch for the politician a growing number of Republican detractors see as “Trump Lite”.
The former president, meanwhile, has his own troubles. Also heading to Iowa, on Monday, Donald Trump has been told he’s likely to face criminal charges in New York for allegedly paying off an adult film actor ahead of his 2016 victory.
We’ll be looking at all that this morning. Here’s what else we’re following today:
The fallout from this week’s airing on Fox News of skewed footage from the January 6 Capitol attack continues, with Lachlan Murdoch, son of the embattled Fox empire owner Rupert Murdoch, raising eyebrows over his defense of the network.
Mitch McConnell remains in hospital recovering from concussion after a fall at a dinner in Washington DC on Wednesday night. Joe Biden says he’s spoken to the family of the 81-year-old Republican Senate minority leader, and says “he’s gonna be alright”.
There’s growing retirement speculation over the future of another Senate veteran, 81-year-old progressive Bernie Sanders, who has represented Vermont as an independent since 2007.
There’s good economic news for Biden, one day after the president unveiled his budget proposals. The US added 311,000 jobs in February, a higher than expected figure.
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