It’s too early to call, considering how the former president managed to hold control of his party last year after his impeachment and acquittal following his January 6, 2021 “efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election,” but hard-right pundit Ann Coulter had this to say on Twitter about Trump Wednesday and his call for Republican leaders to reveal their COVID-19 booster shot status:
“EXCLUSIVE: Trump is demanding to know Ron DeSantis’s booster status, and I can now reveal it. He was a loyal booster when Trump ran in 2016, but then he learned our president was a liar and a con man whose grift was permanent. I hope that clears things up.”
Coulter was referring to Trump’s Tuesday interview on One America News Network – the media outlet he favors because Fox News is no longer “Trumpy” enough – in which he called out Republican leaders for refusing to say whether they have taken the COVID-19 vaccine booster. The answer, he said, “is ‘yes,’ but they don’t want to say it, because they’re gutless.”
Arizona is the new Florida: Trump is headed to Arizona this weekend to be kingmaker for the state’s mid-term GOP primaries, Roll Call reports, and counter to whatever is happening with DeSantis, Republicans there are giddy about it.
It should be noted it was Coulter, and not Trump, who called out Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by name. Coulter turned on Trump for his failure to “act on his promise” to build The Wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, per Newsweek, and she has been pretty much MIA on conservative media since. Perhaps that’s why she has a Twitter account and the former president does not.
About that timeline: A “loyal booster when Trump ran in 2016,” according to Coulter’s tweets, DeSantis now realizes the former president was a “liar and a con man,” but when did he flip?
Not at the CPAC meeting in Orlando late last February, when DeSantis scored 21% in a straw poll of favorite GOP presidential candidates for 2024, second to Trump’s 51% (North Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was third at just 4%). Consensus at the event is that DeSantis would be the Trumpiest alternative if the former president chooses not to run in ’24, and the number-one running mate if he did.
Coulter, so far, hasn’t regained any traction from her tweet, three years after her schism with Trump pretty much removed her from the Fox News world. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), whose split with Trump appears irreconcilable, is concentrating his efforts on blocking any Biden administration proposals, beyond last year’s bipartisan infrastructure program. Counter to Coulter’s strategy, McConnell clearly understands that the best way to get Trump to go away is to ignore him.