Ron DeSantis

A month has passed since Donald Trump officially announced that he is seeking the GOP nomination in the 2024 presidential election. The November 15 announcement received plenty of media coverage, but so far, Trump’s 2024 campaign hasn’t caught fire the way his 2016 campaign did. And some prominent figures on the right, including author Ann Coulter and pundits at Fox News and Fox Business, are aggressively pushing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as an alternative to Trump for the 2024 election.

In an op-ed published by The Hill on December 15, journalist Myra Adams stresses that there is a question that “no one dares to voice” publicly at GOP gatherings: “Will former President Trump drop out of the 2024 presidential race?” But that, according to Adams, doesn’t mean that Republicans aren’t thinking it.

The Washington Times, one of the nation’s largest conservative publications, blistered Donald Trump Tuesday with a commentary whose headline speaks for itself:

“Sorry, Donald, Republicans just don’t want you in 2024.”

Far-right Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t officially announced a presidential run for 2024, but his admirers — from author Ann Coulter to Fox News’ Rupert Murdoch to writers at the National Review — are hoping that he will. As they see it, a DeSantis presidential campaign would be the way for the Republican Party to quit Donald Trump (who announced his 2024 campaign in mid-November) while still satisfying the MAGA base. And if DeSantis does run, he may have found a way to show MAGA voters how he differs from Trump: pandering to the anti-vaxxer crowd.

Never Trump conservative and former GOP strategist Rick Wilson is quite skeptical about DeSantis’ prospects as a 2024 presidential candidate. Wilson, a North Florida resident, believes that DeSantis, for all his bombast, will be crushed in a Republican primary if Trump fully unleashes his cruelty on the Florida governor (who was reelected by 19 percent in the 2022 midterms).

Former President Donald Trump announced on his social media site that he was going to make a big announcement this week. It comes after he already made a big announcement that he was running in 2024, but failed to get any real traction. While it's unclear whether he'll be announcing again, his announcement about a big announcement has already drawn ridicule that he might start announcing every week.

Writing for Politico, National Review editor Rich Lowry, an anti-Trump conservative, called the early announcement just another example of Trump's "flagrant political misjudgment." If Trump was announcing to show his strength it hasn't worked. In fact, Lowry thinks it's been the opposite, calling him "weak."

A Florida rapper who goes by the name of Forgiato Blow delivered a warning shot to the man whom he voted to reelect as his state's governor just weeks earlier.

As Newsweek reports, Forgiato Blow, who has dubbed himself the "Mayor of MAGAville," this week filmed himself defaced a pro-Ron DeSantis mural he created to protest the governor potentially running for president in 2024 in a head-to-head battle against former President Donald Trump.

One of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' allies was found dead last week in a parking lot.

Jacksonville defense contractor Kent Stermon apparently took his own life Thursday outside the Mayport post office after an investigation was launched into his alleged sexual misconduct, reported Orlando Weekly.

On Monday, Mother Jones detailed the QAnon-linked conspiracy theory at the heart of why Florida's chief financial officer just divested billions of dollars from the investment firm BlackRock.

"The firm, Florida chief financial officer Jimmy Patronis alleged, didn’t have its investors’ best interests in mind," reported Kiera Butler. "'Florida’s Treasury Division is divesting from BlackRock because they have openly stated they’ve got other goals than producing returns,' he told Reuters. He was referring to the company’s commitment to environmental, social, and governance principles, a collection of socially responsible investing values widely known by their acronym, ESG."

While Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) promised that if she were in charge of Jan. 6, people would have been more armed and dangerous, other speakers at the Young Republicans gala in New York City talked about the next civil war.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremism throughout the United States, cited the speech from the Young republican president Gavin Wax, who told the Upper East side gala, “We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets."