Ron DeSantis

There’s not one piece on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ political stunt of an election-police task force that we’ve published in the past year or so that didn’t spell out in greater detail what we’ve seen to be true since the beginning: that this sham election crimes force was created for the purposes of boosting DeSantis’ 2024 bid and scaring certain voters away from the polls.

This new reporting from the Orlando Sentinel only adds to that rather solid hypothesis.

A few hours after the janky roll out of his 2024 campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered The Donald a compelling consolation prize if he were to beat the former president in the 2024 primaries.

Two dudes who have advanced their careers, in recent years, by saying and doing things to rile people up as they curate their cult of personality points are teaming up to make an announcement that everyone already had on their 2023 bingo card.

You’ve got Elon Musk in one corner — a man who will say just about anything to elevate his brand as the free speech Messiah. And then you’ve got Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the other — Trump’s long-anticipated 2024 rival who has spent the last year using his Republican-dominated state legislature to pass outrageous, so-called “anti-woke” legislation packaged to appeal to the furthest-right MAGA voters and cushion his 2024 bid.

As he stood before one of the friendliest crowds imaginable this weekend, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was still hesitant to spend much time touting the passage of a strict six-week abortion ban in Florida, a law that he only briefly described as “a landmark piece of legislation for this state.”

DeSantis made a big show of signing his state’s 15-week ban into law last year. He televised the bill’s signing and dragged in a bunch of Republican state lawmakers, children holding pro-life signs and a packed crowd to applaud his signature. But when he signed his six-week ban into law in April, he did it privately. His office marked the occasion by putting out a press release in the middle of the night. When he gave a speech at Liberty University the next day, he didn’t even bring it up.