Ron DeSantis often appears to be an anthropomorphic contraption on automatic pilot; a preprogrammed, robotic pol virtually indistinguishable from his future primary opponent. Observers of this rather bizarre, counterproductive political phenomenon have been asking why any Republican voter would switch from Trump to DeSantis if DeSantis is but a cyborg copy of Trump. It's a damn good question.
The governor's recent #MeToo maneuver of impersonating the former, isolationist president on the Russia-Ukraine war instantly plunged him into hot water. Members of his own party were, shall we say, displeased that DeSantis said, "While the U.S. has many vital national interests ... becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them."
If his statement had been syntactically incomprehensible, it could have come from Trump. Downgrading a 150,000-troop invasion to a "territorial dispute" and thrusting a mammoth European ground war beyond allied America's national interests was the kind of imbecility usually reserved for the foulest, most ignorant swindler to have ever darkened the White House.
But DeSantis, it is clear, becomes apoplectic upon suspecting the base might see him in conflict with the colossal imbecility they have come to love and so deeply admire. And so he apes whatever the big gorilla says. As he did last week on the Russia-Ukraine war. Yet DeSantis also wants desparately to be the darling of Republican leaders such as Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and the party's other Grand Wizards of older-school orthodoxy.
Thus in another Piers Morgan interview this week, as reported by the Associated Press, DeSantis, um, clarified (with near-Trumpian syntax this time):
"What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now, which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately, but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting, and that’s what I was referring to, and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it."
More lucidly, DeSantis added that Vladimir Putin is a "war criminal" and "Obviously, Russia invaded — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — that was wrong." He also insisted that his earlier comments — about which Trump correctly said, "[He's just] following what I am saying" — had been "mischaracterized." They hadn't.
At least in the AP's reporting, omitted in the interview was any recognition on DeSantis's part that the Russia-Ukraine war lies squarely within America's national interests. And so for this and all the other reporting on his having "walked back" his remarks, his reverse ambulation was but a baby step. On the much larger point, DeSantis is still copying Trump. Which means he is still just as dangerous.