Coming around the corner, in the middle of the night, Sean Connery’s character and his sidekick, portrayed by Nicholas Gage, in the classic mid-1990s film, The Rock, saw one of the heavily armed henchmen in that film guarding a rocket that was to be used by the villains to launch a chemical weapon over San Francisco.
Although armed with an MP5 machine gun, Connery’s character pulled out a knife, and threw it at the henchmen who had noticed Connery’s approach and reached for his gun. The knife spliced through the henchmen’s neck, severing his vocal cords, and killing the bald brute.
Without missing a beat, Connery advised his recalcitrant, nerdy sidekick that, “You must never hesitate.”
The goal of the scene was to demonstrate two things: first, Connery’s character, despite being older and having been out of the violent game of covert warfare for decades, was still as lethal as ever. Second, he understood tactics well.
Sure, he could’ve blasted the bad guy with his machine gun. But that might have alerted the other bad guys—he and Cage were outnumbered—and the bullets might have accidentally hit the rocket loaded with nerve gas. Third, the scene was meant to convey that Connery’s character was a stone-cold killer whereas Cage’s character, while brilliant, was soft.
Ron DeSantis: A Great Governor
Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is the best governor of any state in America. He has executed a robust, conservative policy agenda that has morphed the Sunshine State from being the butt of all jokes to being the envy of the country.
Seriously, until 2019 everyone made the “Florida Man” cracks. After COVID-19 eviscerated our country and Florida was the only open and free state in the Union for a long time during the pandemic, no one was making jokes about our state anymore.
Even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was sneaking down to our maskless, free market paradise in the middle of the pandemic!
Ron DeSantis is the second-highest polling candidate in the Republican Party Primary for the 2024 Presidential Election—and he hasn’t even yet announced his candidacy. He has amassed a campaign war chest of $100 million.
DeSantis has a large chunk of support, both among the average Republican primary voter and with the donor class. What’s more, DeSantis has an incredible record of any Republican (including former President Donald Trump) who could run for president this election cycle.
DeSantis has maintained that he’d make his official decision as to whether to run for president in 2024 after the Florida legislative session ended. Well, it’s been over for a week. Each day that DeSantis delays making his announcement is another day he gives to his political rivals—notably Trump—to define him.
And Trump has been doing a stellar job of defining DeSantis as a weak, feckless, agent of globalists, like George Soros. Of course, DeSantis is none of those things. Just look at DeSantis’ aforementioned policies as Florida’s governor.
As my colleague Daniel McCarthy argued recently in the New York Post, however, presidential politics—notably primaries—are less about applying for a job and more about falling in love. The candidate who woos the party faithful the way that a man wins the love of a woman is how the party will choose its presidential nominee.
Trump has wooed the party faithful in spades. DeSantis is still acting like he’s applying for a job.
DeSantis Needs to Stop Hesitating
Beyond that, Trump keeps stepping all over DeSantis’ media real estate. Most recently, as the Florida legislative session wound down, Trump became the main attraction in the media’s spotlight once again.
The former president was given a partial gag order by the judge presiding over the Stormy Daniels case and Trump was found guilty of sexually assaulting—committing battery—the journalist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s by a New York court.
These events would have destroyed the candidacy of another politician running. But because Trump has so thoroughly won the hearts of the GOP voters, he’s made stronger politically by these legal woes.
The recent events help Trump to portray himself as the perennially aggrieved, unfairly accused victim of the Faceless Men who comprise the dreaded Deep State which has pursued Trump with extreme prejudice from the moment he made his infamous campaign announcement in 2016.
Certainly, there’s some truth to the above belief of Trump as the endlessly—and mostly wrongly—persecuted man. Yet, how that qualifies him to be president is beyond me. What isn’t beyond me, though, is how Trump has deftly used this to not only continue generating support but to also suck the oxygen away from DeSantis, who is clearly searching for his window to make his announcement.
If he goes now, he plays into Trump’s hands.
Trump can use any announcement as ammunition in his never-ending arsenal of accusations and insults fired at DeSantis. The former president will make DeSantis’ campaign announcement about how the Florida governor is serving the interests of the globalists by trying to cleave support away from Trump on the heels of his legal problems. Sadly, many Republican voters will believe the forty-fifth president.
It’s Now-or-Never
Ron DeSantis should have announced immediately after Easter Weekend, as I had advised in these pages back then. He would have had a wide-open zone and could have shifted the conversation away from Trump, the persecuted, to the hopeful tomorrow that a DeSantis presidency would bring. He missed his opening then. Now, he’s having his preferred time stolen away from him.
If Ron DeSantis is serious about running for president, he needs to stop trying to control every little aspect of the campaign and simply embrace the kinetic momentum. If he cannot do that, he won’t make it. His time is running out. DeSantis needs to dazzle quickly to right the wrong course he’s headed on.
DeSantis must stop hesitating otherwise the whole campaign will implode before it even gets going.
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A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (May 16), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
