Marc Caputo Profile picture
National political reporter @BulwarkOnline Florida Man. https://t.co/zsZKJ562U7
Jonathan Robinson 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 Profile picture Sherry Minson Profile picture Potato Of Reason Profile picture 4 subscribed
Feb 5 17 tweets 8 min read
‘I’ll permanently fuck up your biorhythms’: The inside story of the DeSantis super PAC’s failure.

You've heard some of the story of what happened at Never Back Down

Learn about it all in my first @BulwarkOnline dispatch

1/15

plus.thebulwark.com/p/desantis-sup… 2

There was talk of staff "mutiny."

There was the "biorhythms" threat

And even a prediction of jail

"I hope you like orange," Adam Laxalt told one consultant
plus.thebulwark.com/p/desantis-sup…
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Jan 16 15 tweets 7 min read
Ron DeSantis's presidential bid is a dead campaign walking after Trump throttled him in must-win Iowa

A year ago, DeSantis was the best hope for Republicans hoping to turn the page from Trump

Here's the inside story of how Trump crushed DeSantis



1/15themessenger.com/politics/the-i… 2
It's debatable if Trump is beatable in a GOP primary

But DeSantis wasn't ready for primetime & he wasn't ready for this.

"DeSantis never established dominance," said Trump co-campaign manager @LaCivitaC

themessenger.com/politics/the-i…
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Oct 31, 2023 8 tweets 4 min read
1 of 8 tweets

Why the Iowa Poll was a "PR disaster for DeSantis:"

Beyond undercutting his narrative that he’s “climbing” or the primary is “a two-man race,” it also highlights the alternate universe constructed by a chronically underperforming campaign

themessenger.com/politics/desan… 2/8
The DeSantis camp is right: Team Trump sees him as the only viable POTENTIAL threat. MAGA Inc has spent $21.5m attacking the gov

He's been the target of more negative indy expenditures — $21.8 million — than any other prez candidate per @rpyers

themessenger.com/politics/desan…
Oct 24, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read
NEWS: Top DeSantis ally @VoteRandyFine —FL legislature’s only Jewish Republican — switches sides & endorses Trump, blasting the gov. for too too little action on antisemitism. He says Trump is better on Israel

1/8

themessenger.com/politics/top-a… 2) Fine lists a host of complaints —including DeSantis’s refusal to aggressively denounce neo-Nazis in FL last year

Fine sees a weak state response to “antisemitic” pro-Palestine rallies at state colleges (others say it’s free speech)

themessenger.com/politics/top-a…
May 25, 2023 5 tweets 3 min read
1/5

Exclusive: In a close-door briefing, DeSantis pollster Ryan Tyson laid out his theory of the case v. Trump based on 4 metrics

✅favorability

✅conservative ratings

✅readiness to be POTUS

✅Everyone else waiting their turn

bit.ly/43m8eap 2/5

Trump’s team dismisses DeSantis’s case as happy talk that ignores Trump’s lead in early states

But independent pollsters say DeSantis’s findings jibe w/their own and shouldn’t be dismissed showing DeSantis being better-liked etc

bit.ly/43m8eap ImageImage
May 24, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
One reason it might be good to let the MSM broadcast a presidential announcement: the MSM knows how to broadcast it without crashing Incredible music
May 18, 2023 10 tweets 5 min read
🧵1/10
An early inside look at DeSantis early state strategy:

He’s ready to go Full Grassley, viewing Iowa as such a make-or-break state for his presidential bid that he’s considering a plan to campaign across all 99 of its counties

themessenger.com/politics/insid… 2/10
Motivating DeSantis in Iowa: Trump’s strong position & the reality of momentum in prez primaries

Strategists tied to DeSantis, Trump & other candidates all believe a Trump Iowa win will likely make his momentum unstoppable heading into NH & beyond

themessenger.com/politics/insid…
May 17, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
The @NikkiFried era @FlaDems starts off with a signature win

@DonnaDeegan, a former TV anchor, had great name ID & ran a centrist & polite campaign w/message discipline

DeSantis-endorsed Daniel Davis ran a hard-right campaign that ignored purple Duuuuvallll demos A Republican familiar with Jacksonville noted this to me:

In 2015, Republican Lenny Curry won the mayoral race in a nearly D+ 2 electorate

But in 2023, the Republican Davis got beat in R+3.3 electorate
Nov 29, 2022 11 tweets 4 min read
“Kanye punked Trump:” the inside story of how the former president walked into an apparent trap after shrugging off advice not to meet with the rapper, who brought along a white nationalist to dinner at Mar-a-Lago

🧵1/10

nbcnews.to/3OIIeiR 2/10 Trump was supposed to have a private dinner w/Ye —but he made an ostentatious entrance to applause at the dining hall Tues & invited Ye’s group to dine w/him on MAL’s patio for all to see. He said it would be “fun” for members to see the rap superstar nbcnews.to/3OIIeiR
Nov 14, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
The House J6 Committee was supposed to find & tell tell the whole truth about what happened when a mob sacked the US Capitol & delayed Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election

Now the whole truth might be censored for political reasons

nbcnews.to/3E8csqE The 9/11 Commission Report was unsparing and comprehensive and so should J6’s, and @AWeissmann_ notes that it doesn’t have to be all Trump because “Most people I know can focus on two things at once.”

nbcnews.to/3E8csqE
Oct 26, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
1/3 Congressional candidate Rebekah Jones is sharing an incomplete document on Instagram suggesting she’s a COVID whistleblower

But she’s not showing page 2:

“There is not reasonable cause to believe Respondent subjected Complainant to unlawful whistleblower retaliation” 2/3 The Florida Commission on Human Relations finding that “there is no reasonable cause to believe” Rebekah Jones is a whistleblower comes after an Inspector General report found her claims were either “unsubstantiated” or were simply false

nbcnews.to/3MU5it4
Oct 24, 2022 6 tweets 4 min read
Once upon a time in Hialeah, a🧵

A (former?) racist nicknamed the “Cuban Confederate” passes out fliers only to be beaten by a violent repeat offender out on felony bond

Sen @marcorubio tweets about it w/out disclosing the victim's ID, which an Antifa account unmasks

1/4 2/4
First off, for folks unfamiliar with Hialeah, it's a vibrant suburban city that's 96% Hispanic, overwhelmingly Cuban American, Republican, working class & tough

It's a place where mayors have been known to throw punches, slur the word "sapingo" & even loanshark (2 of them!)
Oct 5, 2022 7 tweets 3 min read
1/x DeSantis leads Crist by 11 percentage points in Mason-Dixon’s new FL poll

And there’s more:

✅DeSantis has $106 million banked — 27 times more than Crist’s $3.9m

✅DeSantis is outspending Crist on TV by a factor of more than 10 — $16m to about $1.6m
nbcnews.to/3SFw7nI 2. Remember the negative commentary after DeSantis flew migrants from TX to MA? It doesn’t appear to have hurt his approval ratings, which stand at 55-42%

“I don’t think it was a problem &, if it was, the hurricane just wiped it out” —pollster Brad Coker
nbcnews.to/3SFw7nI
Oct 3, 2022 6 tweets 3 min read
1/3
DeSantis defending Lee officials: “Don't forget: Sunday 11am advisory, it was gonna go to Taylor County in North Florida.“

But that’s not the full story. Same forecast showed Ian could hit almost exactly where it did near Lee (south edge of the cone)
youtube.com/embed/jzfg77yG… 2/3

Lots of folks see the forecast cone & focus too much on the center

Remember: there’s a 66% chance the eye will pass somewhere in the cone

The highest chance Sunday was Ian hitting Taylor but there was a reasonable chance of Lee, too

Look at 2 pm Monday & 8 am Tues 👇
Sep 29, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
After disasters, there’s often a fog-of-war shellshocked pessimism where people over-estimate fatalities. It happened after Katrina, for instance.

Let’s hope that’s the case here 👇
Sep 15, 2022 4 tweets 3 min read
If @GovRonDeSantis flew migrants from TX to MA, the expenditure doesn’t track the budgetary proviso that authorized “a program to facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state” —because “this state” is Florida, not TX

1/3

bit.ly/3DwVcwq 2/4
@NPR interviewed the migrants from Venezuela & found that they/the flight originated in San Antonio & stopped in the small FL Panhandle city of Crestview then SC (neither is known for VZ immigrants)

@GovRonDeSantis press shop won’t answer basic questions about any of it
Sep 15, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
The Abbott/DeSantis program moving undocumented migrants to Democrat-controlled sanctuary cities is rooted in two of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals

“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

"A good tactic is one your people enjoy." The Rules for Radicals

bit.ly/3dfgYu1
Aug 27, 2022 6 tweets 3 min read
Florida 🧵

1/6 Today, @CharlieCrist intro’d his running mate, @UTD_AFT1974 prez @KarlaforFlorida, who took a few press Qs & answered some GOP criticisms over Castro, a sex-offender teacher she was once photographer with, COVID lockdowns & DeSantis school board wins 2/6 On Wendell Nibbs, a former Miami teacher union member now imprisoned after sexually assaulting kids & whom Hernandez-Mats had been photographed with, she denied knowledge, condemned him & pivoted to Matt Gaetz

Herald story on Nibbs here bit.ly/3RxupnJ

Transcript 👇
Aug 27, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Federal judge just issued her preliminary order intending to appoint a special master that Trump sought to review the documents seized in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago Pretty swift condemnation from legal Twitter. A sample of QTs and RTs
Aug 8, 2022 6 tweets 4 min read
1/6 For DeSantis Watchers, these grafs in @scontorno & @GabbyOrr_ story on Trump adviser @susie57 indicate DeSantis got manipulated into firing her by those who played on his pride & paranoia to falsely blame her for leaking embarrassing memos
cnn.it/3BQsiXq 2/6
1st off, DeSantis hated Wiles getting credit for turning around his 2018 campaign (she did it for Rick Scott in 2010 & Trump in 2016, too) & those who wanted to cut Wiles out hated her influence. This includes rival lobby shops in Tallahassee & DeSantis was a newcomer in town
May 26, 2022 8 tweets 3 min read
1/3 NEWS: fired FL health worker Rebekah Jones’s claims that officials directed her to falsify COVID data or misrepresent it online have “insufficient evidence,” according to the Dept’s IG which “exonerated” officials in another claim

nbcnews.to/3MU5it4 2/3
Last year, the same IG had said Jones qualified for “whistleblower” protection. Now it finds her claims are unsubstantiated

There was lots of media coverage about that prelim finding. This is the final report

nbcnews.to/3MU5it4