A Political Personality Transplant

Donald Trump receives a full hour of coverage on CNN, the network he loves to bash, while Fox News, the originator of the Trump Derangement Syndrome tag for all Trump detractors, hosts a forum on its One Nation program advising Ron DeSantis to start punching back or risk a first-round knockout by Trump.

Aside from the network optics, which are all designed to draw the highest ratings possible, what we already see from Trump and DeSantis is what we’re likely to get.

With a penchant for scoping out an opponent’s weak spot and using ridicule to hammer home the message, Trump mocked his lower-key rival, saying DeSantis needs a personality transplant, an operation that’s not yet available.

DeSantis did some verbal jousting of his own, telling a gathering in Iowa that governing is not about entertainment and that the GOP must reject what he called the “culture of losing.” From those remarks, we can already get a taste of the DeSantis campaign strategy. He will try to turn his more understated personality into an advantage to convince Republicans that he is all business. That won’t be so difficult, as he has a track record of accomplishments as Florida governor. The harder task will be to convince voters that he’s a winner and Trump is a loser.