Ron DeSantis is trying to rewrite history on Donald Trump. It won't work.

Trump 2016 vs Trump 2024

(Ron DeSantis)

In a CNN town hall on Tuesday night hosted by Jake Tapper, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went after Donald Trump every chance he got.

As CNN noted:

DeSantis came out of the gate with a clear focus on closing his polling gap in the Hawkeye State with Trump.

He took an early shot at Trump, blaming the former president for the country’s inflation woes under current President Joe Biden and for his Republican rival’s actions at the start of the Covid pandemic…

….It continued extensively from there, with DeSantis lobbing a total of eight attacks on the former president over the course of the hour.

Amid that flurry, one DeSantis attack stood out to me — for its utter ridiculousness.

Here it is:

So, you know, Donald Trump, so he's -- when he gets off the teleprompter now, you don't know what he's going to say. It's a different Donald Trump than '15 and '16. You know, back then, he was colorful. But it was really America first about the policies. Now a lot of it's about him.

HA HA HA HA HA

This is not the first time that DeSantis has trotted out the same basic argument.

“What Donald Trump does now is, he is wedded to the teleprompter; he can’t get off that teleprompter,” DeSantis said in late October in New Hampshire. “This is a different Donald Trump than in 2015 and 2016. He’s lost the zip on his fastball and has a sense of entitlement.”

(Sidebar: So is Trump on the teleprompter too much or not enough? I digress…)

And all the way back in June, in an interview with Ben Shapiro, DeSantis said of Trump: “This is a different guy than 2015, 2016.”

At root, what DeSantis is saying is that Trump is a fundamentally different person than the one Republicans voted for in massive numbers in 2016. That he (and they) liked Trump back then — but it’s ok to not like the former president now because he has changed in some meaningful way.

DeSantis is trying to set up a permission structure so that Republicans who were ardent supporters of Trump when he first ran can vote for someone else in the 2024 race. That someone else being, of course, DeSantis.

The problem? Anyone paying ANY attention to politics over the past decade knows that Trump hasn’t changed at all. And especially not in the ways DeSantis is suggesting.

Let’s break down exactly what DeSantis said to Jake about how Trump has changed since 2016.

1. “When he gets off the teleprompter now, you don't know what he's going to say.” This implies that you (or at least DeSantis) knew what Trump was going to say when he went off the teleprompter during the 2016 campaign. Which, as someone who covered that race very closely, I can assure you is false. Part of Trump’s appeal — then and now — is his unpredictability. His voters love when he speaks off the cuff — whether it’s a riff on how how windmills kill birds or on why “Make America Great Again” is the greatest political slogan of all time. That’s how he built his brand. And NOTHING has changed on that front over the past 8 years.

2. “You know, back then, he was colorful. But it was really America first about the policies.” Uh, what? The 2016 version of Trump was really policy heavy? Did I miss something during that campaign? Trump ran a race almost entirely devoid of any major policies. His appeal was (and is) almost entirely tonal. He talked tough. He preened. He insisted that he knew how to make the best deals on, well, everything. Yes, Trump nodded to the idea of “America First” but, again, it was more directional and tonal than it was policy-oriented.

3. “Now a lot of it's about him.” It’s always been entirely about Donald Trump. His entire political life has been defined by his ability to make every issue and every debate about him. Trump purposely created a cult of personality around himself in 2016 — and his time in the presidency — and has simply cultivated that over the course of his 2024 bid.

Nothing DeSantis told Jake then represents an actual change in behavior from Trump. And that’s because Trump doesn’t change. He has been this person — egomaniacal, bullying, self centered — his entire adult life. He made up a person — John Barron — to pitch to the New York City tabloids how desirable and virile he was! I mean, come on people!

Donald Trump 2024 is the same person as Donald Trump 2016. And Donald Trump 1994. And Donald Trump 1980.

I’ll prove it to you. In a 1990 interview with Playboy magazine, Trump said this of himself: “The show is Trump, and it is sold-out performances everywhere.”

He believed it — and lived his life according to it — then. He does the same today.

Political attacks work best when they address a latent (or not so latent) concern that voters have about a candidate. People worried that John Kerry was an indecisive flip flopper so the windsurfing ad was deadly effective. There was a perception that Mitt Romney was a heartless corporate raider so his “corporations are people too” line really stung him. You get the idea.

DeSantis’ attack relies on a belief that Donald Trump circa 2016 was a policy-focused and disciplined candidate who never made things about himself.

Which is totally and completely not believable. Even Trump’s most ardent supporters — then and now — would roll their eyes at DeSantis’ conjuring of how the former president has changed. Or what he was like eight years ago.

Look. DeSantis has to say something if he wants to peel away votes from Trump (in Iowa and elsewhere). But this latest line is simply not credible. And it won’t work.