Political strategist discusses Trump vs.

DeSantis at Democratic luncheon

On April 4, the co-founder of The Lincoln Project spoke to the Longboat Key Democratic Club.

If you like a good Donald Trump joke, then the Sarasota Yacht Club was the place to be on April 4. Rick Wilson was the guest speaker at this month’s Longboat Key Democratic Club luncheon.

Wilson is a political strategist, a former Republican and a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, formed in response to Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

Wilson has a few traits in common with the man he describes as hating with the fire of a billion suns. Both men know how to draw a crowd — 200 seats sold out and disappointed Democrats were turned away at the door — and neither man is opposed to name calling.

Wilson said Republicans can’t be shamed, but they can be mocked. Then, the roast of Gov. Ron DeSantis commenced. Wilson called him “Diet Trump.”

“You’ve got to mock these people, too,” he said.

When an audience member asked why he was so sure DeSantis couldn’t beat Trump for the Republican nomination, Wilson cited the project’s latest survey that said Trump has 56% of Republican voters, then he painted the image of DeSantis on a “sewage chute headed South.”

“Make no mistake, Ron DeSantis is the most dangerous Republican governor in the country. He is an autocrat. He is a bully. He is a punk. He is a thug. And as I said earlier, he has a voice that’s the mansplaining voice of every woman’s first husband,” Wilson said. “You guys have a lot of work to do, not just in Florida, but across the country. Democrats need to learn a couple of simple rules to win in 2024.”

The first rule was more of a credo that he repeated until the audience laughed: The race isn’t about policy. Wilson posed two outcomes. In the first, the country survives as a democracy with free markets and individual liberties. In the second, the country descends into authoritarianism, chaos and oppression.

The guest brought his own guest — Andrew Warren, the Hillsborough County state attorney who was fired by DeSantis last August and has been fighting to get his job back since. While a federal lawsuit ruled that Warren’s indefinite suspension violated both the Florida and U.S. constitutions, the court also ruled that it didn’t have the authority to reinstate him.

“That was so unbelievably unconstitutional and so authoritarian. He removed Andrew from office because he thought Andrew might do something someday that he didn’t like. That’s Fidel Castro. That’s Stalin. That’s Kim Jong-un,” Wilson said. The rest of Wilson’s rules focused on increasing voter registration and finding ways to slowly but surely take back local government and then Senate and House seats.