With Ron DeSantis’ announcement that he is, in fact, running for President, the two-horse race for the Republican nomination between the Governor and Donald Trump has officially begun.
Considering the fact that the first votes won’t be cast for another eight months, their records and positions on the issues will be dissected ad nauseam.
But Thomas Massie just revealed one major issue that could spell trouble for Donald Trump in the GOP Primary.
The issue Trump “can’t run” on?
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is one of the few Members of Congress who truly isn’t beholden to anyone but the voters of Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District.
Unlike most of his colleagues, you won’t find his name on any list of Members of Congress who utilize insider trading to enrich themselves or accept campaign donation payoffs from massive corporations, and he often finds himself at odds with his own Party’s establishment over their total lack of principle and insistence on putting the ruling class elites over the working class.
In fact, the self-proclaimed “journalists” over at Politico blasted the Congressman and mocked him as “Mr. No” due to the fact that he voted “no” on the ruling class elites’ unconstitutional, anti-working class agenda at least 324 times, barely halfway through the 113th Congress alone during his first term in 2014.
Needless to say, Rep. Massie is just a straight shooter who calls it as he sees it.
And as a result, after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially launched his campaign for President, Massie just couldn’t help but point out one major issue that could spell trouble for former President Donald Trump’s efforts to defeat the Governor.
Appearing on the apparently soon-to-be-cancelled Ingraham Angle on Fox News, the Kentucky Congressman told Laura Ingraham that Trump “can’t run on inflation.”
According to Rep. Massie, the former President’s decision to urge Congress to spend trillions on unnecessary legislation, like the CARES Act, only added fuel to the inflation fire – just as Democrats’ spending under President Joe Biden has – leaving him unable to honestly claim he would do a better job solving the inflation issue than Biden.
The reason for the GOP’s lackluster Midterms
Of course, while Massie was sure to point out that should Trump defeat DeSantis – who he has endorsed – he would “enthusiastically” support the former President, he also argued that part of the reason for Republicans’ lackluster 2022 Midterms was the fact that so many Republicans couldn’t run on the issue of inflation because they voted to spend trillions at Trump’s urging.
“The reason Trump can’t run on inflation is he’s the one who pushed the CARES Act,” Massie explained, before noting that he was “screamed at by President Trump” for opposing the trillions in unnecessary spending.
“By the way, if he wins the nomination, I’ll vote for him enthusiastically. But he was for the $2 trillion CARES Act, and one of the reasons we did — we had a lackluster performance in the Midterms is because we couldn’t run against inflation, because most of my colleagues were urged by Trump to spend $3 or $4 trillion we didn’t have that caused the inflation. Ron DeSantis doesn’t have that problem,” Massie added.
Furthermore, Rep. Massie argued that Governor DeSantis can make the point that he was one of the only Governors in America to keep their state’s economy going during COVID, while Trump urged Governors to shut their states down throughout the beginning of the pandemic.
“We all know Trump should have fired [Dr. Anthony] Fauci,” Massie said matter of factly. “But look at what Ron DeSantis did in Florida. He fired his surgeon general, and got one who followed common sense, he got Joseph Ladapo, who followed the science – not ‘the science,’ but the data. So we can expect that Ron DeSantis would do the same thing in the White House.”
Massie also pointed out that at the end of the day, in order for Republicans to achieve what should be their shared ultimate goal of defeating President Biden, the Party’s nominee is going to have to be able to attract new voters to the GOP ticket.
And considering the fact that DeSantis took what Congressman Massie believes to be the correct position during COVID lockdowns, which he described as a war between “left-leaning boomers” and healthy people under 30, the Governor could do just that, just as he did during his historic nearly 20-point reelection victory in the supposed battleground swing state of Florida.
“We’re going to have to reach out to groups that Republicans haven’t reached out to before,” Massie added. “Ron DeSantis didn’t shut down the beaches, or the bars, or the gyms . . . Look, this COVID lockdown nonsense was really a war from the left-leaning boomers against people under 30, who really had not much risk, and Ron DeSantis was the shining star there in these lockdowns.”
“I think we’ve got a lot of young people who said, ‘you know what, I might be a Republican because we had a Republican Governor – unlike California – and our beaches didn’t get shut down, our bars didn’t get shut down, and our gyms didn’t shut down,’” he concluded.
Only time will tell whether Rep. Massie’s predictions that Trump will have issues defending his record, on both inflation and COVID, against DeSantis will come to fruition.
But needless to say, no matter how they position themselves on any number of issues, the 2024 Republican Primary is set to be an absolute dogfight to the bitter end.
Before It’s Banned will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story – before it’s banned.
