US

Marion McKeone: DeSantis emerges as the new GOP pretender as Trump’s grip loosens

Described by party strategists as ‘Trump with a brain’, Ron DeSantis has emerged for Republicans as a creditable contender to the former US president, but he is also widely perceived as lacking in personality or charisma

Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, speaks at a press conference accompanied by his wife Casey: with DeSantis ‘you get all the Trump stuff that fires up the base; the anti-government, anti-immigration, anti-woke red meat. What you don’t get is the distraction and the drama’. Picture: Getty

As Donald Trump faces criminal legal jeopardy on at least three fronts, there is a growing sense among Republicans, even some Trump supporters, that the former president could be more of a liability than an asset in a 2024 face-off against Joe Biden.

Last week, the sound and fury orchestrated by Trump in the wake of the FBI search and retrieval of classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was muted as the extent ...