What media isn’t talking about very much is something that I notice every day in my line of work as a radio producer. I can tell you about the health of a political campaign by how good of a comms shop they have, if they have one at all, and how quick they are to respond to attacks by their opponents, either in a primary or general election. Granted, the field for the GOP isn’t set, yet. Chris Christie and Mike Pence both are expected to formally announce their candidacies next week, and then there’s the specter of New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu just around the corner, and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin keeping his powder dry as the ‘break glass in case of emergency’ candidate. But we have the top two contenders in the race, and you can draw some conclusions already on how their respective communications teams are taking shape.

When Youngkin first began his bid for Virginia governor, his communications team were very green and very sparse. To his credit, Youngkin was a learning machine, and learned very quickly how to be a very good candidate. He was nimble on the stump and quick to recognize issue sets that played naturally into his hand that would win him over voters that might not otherwise give him a second look. And his comms team got remarkably better, knowing that Terry McAuliffe’s machinery was out there waiting for him after the primary battle. By the time the main event happened in 2021, Team Youngkin had the ability to go toe to toe with everything the Democrats could throw. They not only responded, they counterpunched very effectively.

I have two caveats before we begin. One, it’s still very early, and current or past performance is not indicative of future performance. Second, efficient media teams, or whether campaigns have communications teams from this century at all, are not indicators of me supporting one candidate over any other. I’m just judging one little niche of what I believe is necessary to have a successful campaign in this day and age, and my assessment right now is there are only two Republican camps that have a communications operation on a scale worthy of a national campaign – Donald Trump’s and Ron DeSantis’. But only one is operating on another level, and it’s not the former president this time. The DeSantis media team is just flat-out killing it thus far. They’re impressive to watch in action.

Trump’s strong point, whether you agree with what the former president says or does, is that up to now he has been by far the most effective user of alternative and earned media in history to get his message out. He was the king of Twitter. He literally owns Truth Social. To many of his detractors, that obsession with Twitter and his lack of a filter ultimately cost him the 2020 Election. Others live vicariously through his antics online and feed off of the energy of those tweets. And if you just focus on Twitter, and now Truth Social, it’s really just the id of Donald Trump at work here. No surrogates or supporting staff have ever been necessary.

With the DeSantis campaign, they took the best parts of the DeSantis gubernatorial press shop, Christina Pushaw and Bryan Griffin among them, and have assembled a team that is obviously loaded for bear. Let’s look at just a couple examples from this past week.

Since the end of last week, Donald Trump’s big takeaways on social media include:

Guess who had a Temper Trumptrum?

POTUS 47 Candidate Donald Trump went off on his Former Whitehouse Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on TRUTH Social for stating inaccurate Poll numbers indicating that Governor DeSantis was gaining ground towards winning the Republican Primary… pic.twitter.com/CFiNh0UDlP

— DaKey2Eternity (@Key2Eternity) May 31, 2023

McEnany, barring now-Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was the most effective communicator speaking on behalf of Donald Trump he ever had. Now, she’s the latest speed bump under the Trump bus.

Then there’s the flip-flop on Disney. After saying DeSantis was getting killed by Disney on the woke front just five days ago, polling in Florida came out showing not only Trump losing the lead to DeSantis in a month, but the Disney issue resonating hugely with conservative voters. Trump tried to flip the script.

First, Trump criticized DeSantis for taking on woke Disney in the first place. Now, it’s just that he didn’t do it right, or something. How anybody is still buying what this clown is selling at this point is beyond me. pic.twitter.com/Y2uz9OGCW2

— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) May 28, 2023

And on Wednesday night, the former President came out with a new nickname of sorts for his primary challenger, a post that reads as though someone must have hacked his account.

Trump Truth

Have you heard that “Rob” DeSanctimonious wants to change his name, again. He is demanding that people call him DeeeSantis, rather than DaSantis. Actually, I like “Da” better, a nicer flow, so I am happy he is changing it. He gets very upset when people, including… pic.twitter.com/nTd5lTuPtF

— UltraMJTruth (@MJTruthUltra) June 1, 2023

That would normally lose a high school class president campaign, let alone a presidential primary for one of the two major parties. It really is a juvenile and pathetic attack to anyone outside of the Only Trump voters he already has and will never lose. Now let’s compare that to a couple of exchanges with Team DeSantis.

Yet another @CommunityNotes W. https://t.co/XUfmE6ugvS pic.twitter.com/qOHLd6500w

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) May 31, 2023

So Trump’s war room is criticizing then-Representative Ron DeSantis for voting to confirm Christopher Wray as FBI director back in 2017. They seem unaware that Congressman don’t vote on confirmations. Senators do. The pushback from DeSantis’ war room was swift and with receipts. Trump’s War Room has since sanitized that tweet to take out the part where DeSantis voted to confirm and trimmed it to DeSantis supported Trump’s pick. It’s too late. They looked silly for hours and were slagged for it.

Then there was the dueling appearances in Iowa Wednesday. Ron and Casey DeSantis appeared at a rally in Cedar Rapids, and DeSantis War Room clipped the speech and had the highlights up for viewing within an hour. Trump’s team, meanwhile, touted his appearance on WHO-1040AM’s Simon Conway program in Iowa, a very powerful voice in Iowa to be sure. As of the writing of this column, however, there’s not much audio cut and put out by Team Trump from the interview. There is, however, a nine-second clip that Team DeSantis heard and put out there.

Tonight, Donald Trump said he wasn’t “allowed” to fire Fauci.

But Trump repeatedly said he could have — but didn’t to avoid criticism by the media.

Trump promised to Drain the Swamp. All we got were excuses. pic.twitter.com/umdJk6hgTL

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 1, 2023

Again, within about an hour, Team DeSantis had that clip out there of Trump making the excuse that he couldn’t do anything about firing Fauci. Yet that’s not what he promised in rallies and media hits, and Team DeSantis already had the highlight receipt reel ready to go.

NEVER FORGET: Donald Trump repeatedly said he didn’t fire Fauci because he didn't want to take “heat” from the media and the Left. pic.twitter.com/J1NtHPkZ29

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) May 31, 2023

Then, just for good measure, they had another A/B montage clip ready to go differentiating Trump from DeSantis on lockdown policy during the pandemic back in July of 2020.

FLASHBACK to July 2020

When acting president Anthony Fauci attacked Florida for opening “too quickly,” Ron DeSantis stood strong — declaring there was “NO JUSTIFICATION” to impose lockdowns and restrictions. pic.twitter.com/L5VCRVHYnh

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 1, 2023

Again, take this for whatever it is worth. Comms is a small, small portion of any campaign, and it certainly does not replace policy positions or character defects. But what I will tell you is that if you show me a campaign that has a rapid response team that is that nimble in its first week, I’ll show you a campaign that’s putting itself in a position to win the whole thing in 18 months.