DeSantis’ Donors, Travel Advisories & Revisionist Weather – Top 3 Takeaways – May 23rd, 2023
- Another day another donor for DeSantis. Yes, another elected Republican politician entered the presidential race on Monday. No, it wasn’t Ron DeSantis. The GOP primary field for president is already proving to be so crowded that Senator Tim Scott’s entrance into the race wasn’t even the first from his home state of South Carolina. But while Tim was talking up the “Miracle of America”, the theme of his presidential campaign, there was a minor miracle of sorts which could be a significant sign in a potential sea change in support for the upcoming cycle. The man who literally established the MAGA ETF, Hal Lambert, former top Trump supporter, mega donor, and member of the former president’s inaugural committee has defected to DeSantis. On Monday, in an online interview with Fox News, Hal said: I’m in for DeSantis this time — I plan to do a lot to help DeSantis win. DeSantis is a leader who knows how to govern, not just have news headlines and slogans. Now for most of us mega donor mumbo jumbo is just that. It might impact political campaigns, but it doesn’t impact us. But having one of Trump’s largest and most loyal donors defect to DeSantis right before Florida’s governor is set to enter the race is a significant sign. And so too is the reason he gave for turning away from Trump. It wasn’t January 6th. It wasn’t an indictment. It was something I’ve specifically cited as Trump’s Achilles heel. Quoting Hal: We can’t talk about things from four years ago that can’t be changed. Well, that’s true, if Republicans want to win that is. As I recently said after the CNN Trump Town Hall... Elections are always about the future. They’re never about the past. Anyone, including Donald Trump who runs on the past will lose. And while there’s still an opportunity for Trump to leave the past behind and focus on the future, his unwillingness and seeming inability to do so to date has now resulted in his first related loss this cycle. That of literally one of his most valuable supporters. Trump is continuing to focus on defeating DeSantis. The irony is that it may well be the case that DeSantis isn’t Trump’s biggest threat in the Republican primary. It could be that he’s his own worst enemy. Once DeSantis officially gets in, the margin for Trump to remain undisciplined and to win will drop. Will Trump be able to get on message and stay on message about the future? Or will tomorrow bring another day and another donor who used to be with Trump, DeSantis’ way? Speaking of DeSantis...
- Getting rid of him once and for all. Two days after issuing a ridiculous travel advisory to minorities to beware of traveling into Florida because of “hostile” policies towards minorities within it. The President of the NAACP said something equally as absurd. He told CNN that Democrats need to get “rid of him (DeSantis), once and for all.” First the NAACP issues a travel advisory for minorities entering Florida, the state with the third highest minority population in the country, which sports the third lowest minority unemployment rate in the country and has the highest rate of minority job growth in the country. And that happens because the state’s so hostile against minorities of course, and then the President of the NAACP says that Democrats need to get rid of DeSantis once and for all in 2024. Well, the joke’s on him. Because even if DeSantis were to lose in 2024, he’d still be Florida’s governor for two more years. That is unless that call for Democrats to get rid of him once and for all is an actual threat against our governor. My inclination is that the president of the NAACP is just that big of a fool, just look at the absurdity of the advisory, but it requires providing him the benefit of the doubt for him to only be a race-baiting fool. What does that tell you?
- Revisionist weather and no named storms. Maybe you’ve noticed a disturbance being tracked by the National Hurricane Center to the east of us recently, maybe you haven’t. But if you have you may have been surprised to hear that we’ve already had our first storm of the year. Now preseason storms as we’ve recently discussed, aren’t really that rare. But preseason storms being identified in May that theoretically happened in January are. As in we’ve never had anything quite like this being decided before. It’s common for the National Hurricane Center to study systems long after they’re gone to attempt to learn, understand and identify characteristics with systems that perhaps weren’t originally known. That’s, for example, what recently happened with Hurricane Ian being officially classified as a category 5 hurricane last year. However recently the National Hurricane Center decided to revisit a weather system which happened in January off the northeast coast of the US. And when they did, they decided it was a subtropical storm. There were never related advisories issued at the time. There were no issues, no damage and there at most would have been subtropical conditions that quickly dissipated according to the NHC’s accounting of said subtropical storm which was declared to have existed about four months after it theoretically happened. Now the storm wasn’t named because only those which produce advisories in real-time are, but through revisionist weather history, we were told our first storm of the Atlantic Hurricane Season happened four months ago. And this isn’t the first time. In February of 2014 a storm is said to have existed in December of 2013 – making this most recent storm the 2nd on record since the naming of storms to go unnamed. And the longest yet to have happened before being identified. But my question is this. With all of the technology in place today, if a theoretical sub-tropical storm takes place, near population mind you, and it takes four months for someone to decide that maybe for like an hour it was a thing... Was it really a thing after all? And more than anything else what this is an illustration of is how storm totals are becoming forever inflated. Today’s technology, and the time spent using it, is leading to systems like this one being identified as storms that never would have been before. Which for science and researchers may be fun between hurricane seasons, but that in reality aids in skewing perceptions about increased tropical activity which can, and often is, used for both weather hype and political purposes. This makes the parsing of storm data and trends even more challenging from an analytical perspective.